SeLeCT THOUGHTS 

ROBERTSON OF BRIGHTON 




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SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF 



FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON 



OF BRIGHTON'' 



EDITED BY 



JOSEPH B. BURROUGHS, M.D. 





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NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 
CINCINNATI : CRANSTON & CURTS 

1893 



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Copyright, 1893, by 
HUNT & EATON 
New York. 



Electrotj'ped, printed, and bound by 

HUNT & EATON, 

100 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



Frederick William Robertson was born 
in London February 3, 1816, and died in 
Brighton in August, 1853, at the age of thirty- 
seven. As a boy he was singularly pure, high- 
spirited, and courageous, and though his father, 
an artillery officer, destined him for the Church 
he clung to his early resolve to be a soldier, 
until in his twentieth year he yielded to the 
paternal wish and entered Oxford University. 
He was ordained a minister of the iVnglican 
Church in 1840, and labored at Winchester, 
Cheltenham, and briefly at Oxford, before 
August, 1847, when he began to preach in Trin- 
ity Chapel, Brighton, a pulpit which he made 
famous for his earnestness, his eloquence, and 
his lucid explanations of the sweet reasonable- 
ness of spiritual truth. 

Since his death the sermons of '* Robertson 
of Brighton*' have been widely read in Amer- 
ica and England. The present editor has 
undertaken to select suggestive passages from 
these published volumes and to group them 
upon a simple and natural plan, prefixing to 
each an appropriate portion of Scripture, 



(slANUAr^Y. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



JAN. 

Resolves i 

God is a Spirit. 2 

God's Greatness 3 

God is Unchangeable 4 

God is Holy 5 

God is Love 6 

God is Just 7 

God's Humanity 8 

Creation 9 

History of Creation 10 

God, in His Works 11 

God is Everywhere 12 

The Robes of the Invisible 13 

The Sea 14 

The Night , 15 

Christ, Our Mediator 16 

Christ, the Son of Man 17 

Christ, the Son of God , 18 

Christ's Daily Life 19 

Christ's Knowledge 20 

Christ's Teaching 21 

The Sermon on the Mount 22 

Christ's Miracles 23 

Christ's Will .. 24 

Christ's Sinlessness 25 

Christ was Tempted 26 

Cliisist's Love c 27 

Christ's Atonement 28 

The Cross of Christ 29 

The Blood of Christ 30 

Christ's Resurrected Body 31 



THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN 



1. 

RESOLVES. 



This one thing I do, forgetting those things which 
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which 
are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the 
high calling of God in Christ Jesus. — Phil, iii, 13, 14. 

nrO try to make conversation more useful, 
-■• and therefore to store my mind with 
facts, yet to be on my guard against a wish to 
shine. 

To feel it a degradation to speak of my own 
doings. 

To speak less of self, and think less. 

To try and overcome castle-building. 

To try to iix attention on Christ, rather 
than on the doctrines of Christ. 

To try to fix my thoughts in prayer without 
distraction. 

To listen to conscience, instead of, as Pilate 
did, to intellect. 



8 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 2. 

2. 

GOD IS A SPIRIT. 

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and in truth. — John iv, 24. 

XIT'HAT is meant by spirit? . . . Consider 
' ^ the universe, with the stars and sun, 
the harmony of the planets. All this force, 
order, harmony — that is God. This spring 
season, with bursting vegetation — its life is 
God. Our own minds, their thought and feel- 
ing — that is spirit. God, therefore, is the 
Mind of the universe. Force, law, harmony 
— all this is God. And yet remark the cold- 
ness of this, for he is thus revealed only as 
a God for the intellect, not for the heart. 
Therefore, for the heart he is revealed as a 
Father. 

God will never be visible, nor will his 
blessedness. He has no form. The pure in 
heart will see him, but never with the eye; 
only in the same way, but in a different de- 
gree, that they see him now. In the antici- 
pated vision of the Eternal, what do you 
expect to see '^ A shape 1 Hues ? You will 
never behold God! 



Jan. 3.] GOD'S GREA7\YESS. 9 

3. 

GOD'S GREATNESS. 

Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any : he 
is mighty in strength and wisdom. — Job xxxvi, 5. 

THE first measurement, so to speak, which 
is given us of God's greatness is in re- 
spect of Time. He inhabiteth eternity. . . . 
Now the only way we have of forming any 
idea of eternity is by going step by step up 
to the largest measures of time we know of, 
and so ascending on and on till we are lost 
in wonder. . . . There is a second measure 
given us of God. It is in respect of Space. 
He dwelleth in the high and lofty place. He 
dwelleth moreover in the most insignificant 
place — even the heart of man. ... It is diffi- 
cult to say which conception carries with it 
the greatest exaltation — that of boundless 
space or that of unbounded time. The third 
measure which is given us of God respects 
his character. His name is Holy. The chief 
idea which this would convey to us is sepa- 
ration from evil. -. . . None but the pure can 
understand purity. The chief knowledge 
which we have of God's holiness comes from 



10 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 4. 

our acquaintance with unholiness. We know 
what impurity is — God is not that. We know 
what restlessness and guilt and passion are, 
and deceitfulness and pride and waywardness 
— all these we know. God is none of these. 
And this is our chief acquaintance with his 
character. We know what God is not. . . . 
Holiness is only a shadow to our minds until 
it receives shape and substance in the life of 
Christ. 

4. 

GOD IS UNCHANGEABLE. 

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and 
forever. — Heb. xiii, 8. 

/^FT have I felt, when fevered by earthly 
^-^ excitement and ruffled by earthly diffi- 
culties, as I looked up to the expanse of 
heaven above in the pure, still moonshine, 
that it was an emblem of God's unchanging 
calmness rebuking the tumult within and say- 
ing to the storm, *^ Peace, be still.'* The more 
serene a man be the more incapable of being 
ruffled and agitated by outward circumstances, 
looking on the universe as God does, the 
more nearly does he resemble God. 



Jan. 7.] GOD IS JUST. H 

5. 

GOD IS HOLY. 

And they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, 
holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to 
come.-»Rev. iv, 8. 

LOVE, mercy, tenderness, purity — these are 
no mere names when we see them 
brought out in the human actions of our 
Master. . . . All this character of holiness is 
intelligible to us in Christ. 

There is a third light in which God's holi- 
ness is shown to us, and that is in the stern- 
ness with which he recoils from guilt. 

6. 

GOD IS LOVE. 

God is love ; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
in God, and God in him. — i John iv, 16. 

IN the spiritual world a man is measured not 
by his genius, but by his likeness to God. 
God does not reason nor remember, but he 

loves. 

7. 

GOD IS JUST. 

Our God is a consuming fire. — Heb. xii, 29. 

THERE is no discord between the powers 
and attributes of the mind of God ; there 
is no discord between his justice and his 



12 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 8. 

love. God's justice and love are one. In- 
finite justice must be infinite love. Justice is 
but another sign of love. 

Love is justice applied to different objects, 
just as the electric spark is different to different 
senses ; to the ear a sound, to the tongue a 
sulphurous taste, to the eye a blinding flash. 
Could love save Sodom "^ Would it have been 
love to let such a city go on seeding earth with 

iniquity } 

8. 

GOD'S HUMANITY. 
It behooved him to be made like unto his brethren 
that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in 
things pertaining to God. — Heb. ii, 17. 

r^ OD cannot give advice ; he can only issue 
^^ a command. God cannot say, *' It is bet- 
ter to do this ; '* his perfections demand some- 
thing absolute: "Thou shalt do this; thou 

shalt not do this.** 

9. 

CREATION. 
O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in wisdom 
hast thou made them all : the earth is full of thy 
riches. — Psalm civ, 24. 

THE first chapter of Genesis starts with the 
doctrine that the heavens and the earth, 
that light and darkness, were all created by 



Jan. lo.] HISTORY OF CREATION. 13 

one and the same God. Modern science day 
by day reveals more clearly the unity of 
design that pervades creation. Again, in 
Moses's account nothing is more remarkable 
than the principle of gradation on which he 
tells us the universe arose. To this the ac- 
cumulated strata bear their witness, to this 
the organic remains testify continually. Not 
that first which is highest, but that which is 
lowest. First the formless earth, then the 
green herb growing on the sides of the up- 
raised mountains, then the lowest forms of 
animal existence, then the highest types, then 
man, the last and noblest. And then, per- 
haps, an age to come, when all shall be swept 
away to make room for a higher and nobler 
race of beings. For "that is not first which 
is spiritual, but that which is natural.'* 

10. 

HISTORY OF CREATION. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth. — Gen. i, i. 

C\^ the Book of Genesis the earlier part 
^-^ consists of extracts from two distinct 
documents, distinguished by the use of ** God" 
(Elohim) and *^ Lord " (Jehovah). Whence 



14 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Jan. lo. 

were the materials for this history procured ? 
The answer is interesting. ... It is almost 
certain that it was not from Egypt, but 
Chaldea, from whence Abraham came. 
We might have almost expected this from the 
story of the confusion of tongues, the scene of 
which is Babylon. It appears, therefore, that 
at the time when the Israelites left Egypt, 
and long after, the very accounts which were 
given to them by Moses were the accounts 
taught and received by another portion of 
the human race, from whom they had been 
brought by Abraham and preserved for 
centuries. It seems that Moses committed to 
writing those parts which were chiefly calcu- 
lated to be prefatory to his law, and to cor- 
roborate by an appeal to antiquity the great 
doctrine he was commissioned to teach — the 
unity of God and his moral government of 
the world, nations, and individuals. . . . This 
explanation of two documents will account 
for what must have often struck you — the 
repetitions which you find in many accounts, 
the going back every now and then to a point 
which had been passed, and tracing the same 
ground over again in different words until the 
thread is taken up where it was broken off, 



Jan. II.] GOD, IN HIS WORKS, 15 

11. 

GOD. IN HIS WORKS. 

The glory of the Lord shall endure forever: the 
Lord shall rejoice in his works. — Psalm civ, 31. 

*' LJE was in the world/' an indwelling of 
^ A Deity in matter, which is unconscious 
of his presence. Creation was by indwelling. 
I ask you to remark how this stands con- 
trasted with the unscriptural conception of 
creation which men often have. What do 
people mean generally by xreation } They 
mean that God made the world as a watch- 
maker makes a watch. The watchmaker 
makes the watch, winds it up, goes away from 
it, and leaves it go by itself. . . . God is 'Sn 
the world,'* the Life of all that is, the Vital 
Force ; not giving laws, but himself the 
Law. . . . The beauty of the seashell and of 
the field flower is the loveliness of God ; the 
Force which moves the waters everlastingly is 
the mighty movement of the one living Being; 
the instinct which brings the wild birds in 
long lines through heaven at the appointed 
season is the order of the mind of God in 
them, 



16 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Jan. 12. 

12. 

GOD IS EVERYWHERE. 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : if 1 
make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take 
the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, 
and thy right hand shall hold me. — Psalm cxxxix, 8, 9, 10. 

NOT only is God everywhere, but all of 
God is in every point. Not his wisdom 
here, and his goodness there ; the whole 
truth may be read, if we had eyes, and heart, 
and time enough, in the laws of a daisy's 
growth. God's beauty, his love, his unity; 
nay, if we observe how each atom exists not 
for itself alone, but for the sake of every other 
atom in the universe, in that daisy or atom you 
may read the law of the Cross itself. The 
crawling of a spider before now has taught per- 
severance and led to a crown. The little moss, 
brought close to a traveler's eye in an African 
desert, who had laid down to die, roused him 
to faith in that love which had so curiously ar- 
ranged the minute fibers of a thing so small, to 
be seen once and but once by a human eye, and 
carried him in the strength of that heavenly 
repast, like Elijah of old, a journey of forty 
days and forty nights to the source of the Nile. 



Jan. 14.] THE SEA. 17 

13. 

THE ROBES OF THE INVISIBLE. 
The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the 
firmament showeth his handiwork. — Psalm xix, I. 

THE sounds and sights of this lovely world 
are but the drapery of the robe in which 
the Invisible has clothed himself. Does a man 
ask what this world is, and why man is placed 
in it ? It was that the invisible things of Him 
from the creation of the world might be seen. 
Have we ever stood beneath the solemn vault 
of heaven when the stars were looking down 
in silent splendor, and not felt an overpower- 
ing sense of his eternity.'* When the white 
lightning has quivered in the sky, has that told 
us nothing of power, or only something of elec- 
tricity ? Rocks and mountains — are they here 
to give us the idea of material massiveness, 
or to reveal the conception of the Strength of 

Israel 1 

14. 

THE SEA. 
And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto 
the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and 
there was a great calm. — Mark iv, 39. 

THE sea rests not, because of the attraction 
of the heavenly bodies, which keep it in 
an endless ebb and flow — drawn toward the 
2 



18 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Jan. 15. 

earth and drawn toward the sky alternately, 
and obeying neither impulse solely, it cannot 
rest. Know we nothing of this in our own 
bosoms ? There is a tide of feeling which 
ebbs alternately to heaven and earth. "The 
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit 
against the flesh." We are conscious, surely, 
of high instincts that tell of God; conscious, 
besides, of groveling propensities that drag 
us down to earth — low wants and lofty long- 
ings. . . . The love of God must master the 
world's attraction, or if not, then the soul is 
"like the troubled sea when it cannot rest.'* 

15. 

NIGHT. 
There shall be no night there. — Rev. xxii, 5. 

IN the dust and pettiness of life we seem to 
cease to behold Him ; then at night He 
undraws the curtain again and we see how 
much of God and eternity the bright distinct 
day has hidden from us. Yes, in solitary, 
silent, vague darkness, the Awful One is near. 
I have been sitting out to look at this lovely 
night, with a pale, pearly sky — iytto^ not at^ 
which you look, till you have pierced into the 
forever. 



Jan. 17.] CHRIST, THE SON OF MAN, ^ 19 

16. 

CHRIST, OUR MEDIATOR. 
For there is one God, and one mediator between 
God and men, the man Christ Jesus. — i Tim. ii, 5. 

'*TF God is love, why do we need a Medi- 
^ ator?" I think the best answer is, I do 
not know. Nor do I know why, God being love, 
the intervention of maternal suffering is the in- 
dispensable condition of existence, or why suf- 
fering is the necessary medium for the procur- 
ing of anything that really deserves the name 
of blessing. Why are knowledge, civilization, 
health, purchased only by severe labor for us by 
others — that is through mediation? I only know 
that it is so — an unalterable law, the beauty of 
which I can dimly see. . . . And seeing that as 
the law of the universe, I am prepared to be- 
lieve and acquiesce in it, when found in the 
atonement, as part of the divine government. 

17. 
CHRIST, THE SON OF MAN. 
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself : 
handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones, as ye see me have. — Luke xxiv, 39. 

T^HE incarnation declared that the Son of 

* man is the Son of God. One appeared 

who was not the Jew, nor the Greek, nor the 



20 « THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 18. 

Roman, but the Man ; One in whose veins 
ran the blood of the human race ; One in 
whose character was neither exclusively the 
woman nor the man, but all that was most 
manly, and all that was most womanly. 

18. 

CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD. 

These [signs] are written, that ye might believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing 
ye might have life through his name.—]o\\vi xx, 31. 

r^ HRIST was the Son of God. But re- 
^^ member in what sense he ever used 
this name — Son of God because Son of man. 
He claims sonship in virtue of his human- 
ity. . . . Only through man can God be 
known ; only through a perfect man perfectly 
revealed. Christ, then, must be loved as Son 
of man before he can be adored as Son of 
God. In personal love and adoration of 
Christ the Christian religion consists, not in 
correct morality or in correct doctrines, but 
in a homage to the King. . . . Live with him 
till he becomes a living thought — ever present 
■ — and you will find a reverence growing up 
which compares with nothing else in human 
feeling. 



Jan. 20.] CHRIST'S KNOWLEDGE. 21 

19. 

CHRIST'S DAILY LIFE. 
A MAN of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. — Isa. liii, 3. 

HE has entered little into the depths of our 
Master's character who does not know 
that the settled tone of his disposition was a 
peculiar and subdued sadness. Take the two 
brightest moments of his career. When glory 
encircled him on the mountain, where his form 
was clothed in the radiance of a supernal cloud, 
what was his conversation with Moses and 
Elias } They spake to him of his decease. 
When a multitude escorted him triumphantly 
into Jerusalem, in the very midst of all that 
merriment his tears were flowing for Jerusalem. 
Not the splendor of a transfiguration and not 
the excitement of a procession could dazzle 
the view which the Son of man had formed of 

life. 

20. 

CHRIST'S KNOWLEDGE. 

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in 
favor with God and man. — Luke ii, 52. 

THE Son of God increased in wisdom as well 
as stature. He knew more at thirty than 
at twenty. There were things he knew at twenty 
which he had not known before. In the last 



22 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 21. 

year of his life he went to a fig tree expecting 
to find fruit and was disappointed. In all mat- 
ters of eternal truth, principles which are not 
measured by more or less truth, his knowledge 
was absolute ; but it would seem that in mat- 
ters of earthly fact, which are modified by time 
and space, his knowledge was, like ours, more 
or less dependent upon experience. 

Now we forget this ; we are shocked at the 
thought of the partial ignorance of -Christ 
as if it were irreverence to think it ; we shrink 
from believing that he really felt the force of 
temptation, or that the forsakenness on the 
cross and the momentary doubt have par- 
allels in our human life. In other words, we 
make that divine Life a mere mimic repre- 
sentation of griefs that were not real, and 
surprises that were feigned, and sorrows that 
were theatrical. 

21. 

CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

I SAT daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye 
laid no hold on me. — Matt, xxvi, 55. 

/'^HRIST taught much that God is love. 
^-^ He spoke a great deal of the Father 
which is in heaven. He instructed in those 
parables which required thoughtful attention, 



Jan. 22.] THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, ^S 

exercise of mind, and a gentle, sensitive con- 
science. He spoke didactic, cahn discourses, 
very engaging, but with little excitement in 
them ; such discourses as the Sermon on the 
Mount, respecting goodness, purity, duties; 
which, assuredly, if anyone were to venture so 
to speak before a modern congregation, would 
be stigmatized as a moral essay. Accordingly 
his success was much less marked than that of 
John. No crowds were baj^tized as his fol- 
lowers; one hundred and twenty in an upper 
chamber appear to have been the fruits of his 
life work. To teach so, is assuredly not the way 
to make strong impressions; but it is the way 
to work deeply, gloriously — for eternity. How 
many of John's terrified Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees, suppose we, retained the impression 
six months.'^ 

22. 

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

I SAY unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ; 
that ye may be the children of your P'ather which is in 
heaven. — Matt, v, 44, 45. 

THERE are two erroneous views held 
respecting the character of the Sermon 
on the Mount . . . The man of the world 



24 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [jkn. 23. 

says, ^' It is morality only, and that is the whole 
of religion." The mistaken religionist says, '^ It 
is morality only, not the entire essence of Chris- 
tianity." In opposition to both these views we 
maintain that the Sermon on the Mount con- 
tains the sum and substance of Christianity. . . . 
The morality which it teaches is disinterested 
goodness — goodness not for the sake of the 
blessing that follows it, but for its own sake, and 
because it is right. " Love your enemies," is the 
Gospel precept. Why? Because if you love 
them you shall be blessed; and if you do not, 
cursed ? No ; but . . . *' that ye may be the chil- 
dren of" — that is, may be like — *^your Father 
which is in heaven." The second peculiarity of 
Christianity — and this, too, is an essential pe- 
culiarity of this sermon — is that it teaches and 
enforces the law of self-sacrifice . . . the very 
law and spirit of the blessed cross of Christ. 

23. 

CHRIST'S MIRACLES. 

He did not many mighty works there because of 
their unbelief. — Matt, xiii, 58. 

MIRACLES have only done their work 
when they teach us the glory and the 
awfulness that surrounds our common life. 



Jan. 25.] CHRIST'S SINLESSNESS. 25 

In a miracle God for one moment shows him- 
self, that we may remember it is he that is at 
work when no miracle is seen. 

24. 

CHRIST'S WILL. 

I SEEK not mine own will, but the will of the Father 
which hath sent me. — John v, 30. 

YOU ask if Christ's will was strong, simply 
because upheld by the Spirit without 
measure in him ? I should reply, '^Because he 
was a perfect Man." Perfect man is manhood 
with all its appetites, affections, moral sense, 
aspirations, intellect, in complete equilib- 
rium. ... It was that entire harmony with 
the mind of God which made his will so 
strong. Self-will is weak sometimes even in a 

Napoleon. 

25. 

CHRIST'S SINLESSNESS. 

For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin. — Heb. iv, 15. 

THERE was no germ of sin in Christ ; for 
sin is the acting of an evil will. Sin 
resides in the will, not in the natural appe- 
tites. There was no germ of sin in him ; but 



26 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 26. 

there were germs of feeling, natural and inno- 
cent, which show that he was in all points 
tempted like as we are. 

CHRIST WAS TEMPTED. 
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilder- 
ness to be tempted of the devil. — Matt, iv, i. 

THE temptation of Christ caused suffering. 
He suffered from the force of desire. 
Though there was no hesitation whether to 
obey or not, no strife in the will, in the act of 
mastery there was pain. There was self- 
denial — there was obedience at the expense of 
tortured natural feeling. There was no re- 
luctance in the will. But there was no 
struggling; no shudder in the inward sensa- 
tions; no remembrance that the cross was 
sharp; no recollection of the family at Beth- 
any, and the pleasant walk and dear com- 
panionship which he was about to leave. . . . 
Not by the reluctancy of a sinful sensation, 
but by the quivering and the anguish of 
natural feeling when it is trampled upon by 
lofty will — Jesus suffered^ being tempted. He 
was "tempted like as we are.*' Remember 
this. 



Jan. 28.] CHRIST'S ATONEMENT. 2? 

27. 

CHRIST'S LOVE. 

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man 
lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if 
ye do whatsoever I command you. — John xv, 13, 14. 

HIS was a love which insult could not 
ruffle nor ribaldry imbitter, and which 
only grew sweeter and sweeter. The sym- 
pathy of Christ extends to the frailties of 
human nature, not to its hardened guilt. He 
is " touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
itiesT There is not a single throb in a single 
human bosom that does not thrill at once 
with more than electric speed up to the 
mighty heart of God. 

28. 
CHRIST'S ATONEMENT. 

God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, 
not imputing their trespasses unto them. — 2 Cor. v, ig. 

HERE is the mystery of the atonement. 
God is reconciled to men for Christ's 
sake. Earnestly I insist that the atonement 
is through Christ. God is reconciled to hu- 
manity in Christ, then to us through him — 
" God was in Christ." It was a divine hu- 
manity. To that humanity God is reconciled; 



28 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 29. 

there could be no enmity between God and 
Christ; '*I and my Father are one." To all 
those in whom Christ's Spirit is, God imputes 
the righteousness which is as yet only seminal, 
germinal ; a seed, not a tree ; a spring, not a 
river; an aspiration, not an attainment; a right- 
eousness in faith, not a righteousness in works. 
It is not, then, an actual righteousness, but an 
imputed righteousness. Hence we see what 
is meant by saying, '^ Reconciled or atoned 
through Christ.*' We do not mean that each 
man reconciles himself, as Christ did, by being 
righteous ; but we mean that God views him 
favorably as partaking of that humanity which 
has been once exhibited on earth a holy, per- 
fect, and divine thing. 

29. 
THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be 
satisfied. — Isa. liii, 11. 

THE sacrifice of Christ was a voluntary one, 
else had it been no sacrifice at all; there- 
fore we read, " No man taketh my life from me, 
but I lay it down of myself." The cross is hum- 
bleness, love, self-surrender. We degrade his 
life and death by pictures of his physical suffer- 
ing and his bodily agony on the cross. For it 



Jan. 30.] THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. 29 

was not the nails that pierced his hands which 
wrung froQi him the exceeding bitter cry, but 
the iron that had entered his soul. The act of 
Christ is the act of humanity — that which all 
humanity is bound to do. . . . Vicarious for all^ 
yet binding upon all. 

30. 

THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. 

And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy 
to take the hook, and to open the seals thereof: for thou 
wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out 
of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation. — 
Rev. V, g. 

DLOOD does not please God. '* As I live, 
'-^ saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the 
death of the sinner." Do you think God has 
pleasure in the blood of the righteous ? blood 
merely as blood ? suffering merely, as if suffer- 
ing had in it mysterious virtue .'* No, my breth- 
ren ! God can be satisfied wuth that onlv which 
pertains to the conscience and the will ; so says 
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews : '^ Sac- 
rifices could never make the comers thereunto 
perfect." The blood of Christ was sanctified 
by the will with which he shed it. How could 
the Father be satisfied with the death of Christ 
unless he saw in the sacrifice mirrored his own 



30 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Jan. 31. 

love ? Agony does not satisfy God — agony only 
satisfied Moloch. Nothing satisfies God but the 
voluntary sacrifice of love. The pain of Christ 
gave God no pleasure — only the love that was 
tested by pain — the love of perfect obedience. 
*' He was obedient unto death." The pain, the 
blood, the death, were the last and highest evi- 
dence of entire surrender. 

31. 

CHRIST'S RESURRECTED BODY. 
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: 
handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones, as ye see me have. — Luke xxiv, 39. 

T T is fancied that in the history of Jesus's exis- 
^ tence, once for a limited period and for def- 
inite purposes, he took part in frail humanity; 
but that when that purpose was accomplished 
the Man forever perished, and the Spirit re- 
ascended, to unite again with pure, unmixed 
Deity. But Scripture has taken peculiar pains 
to give assurance of the continuance of his hu- 
manity. It has carefully recorded his resurrec- 
tion. After that he passed through space from 
spot to spot ; when he was in one place he was 
not in another. . . . The present manhood of 
Christ conveys this deeply important truth, that 
the divine heart is human in its sympathies. 



FEBr^UAr^Y, 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



FEB 

Christ Within Us I 

The Holy Spirit 2 

The Trinity , 3 

Emptiness of Life 4 

Disappointments uf Life 5 

Meaning of Life 6 

Your Life Work 7 

Guidance 8 

Possibilities 9 

Repining at Circumstances 10 

Serving God at a Loss ii 

Circumstances are Sent by God. 12 

Nature Helps the Good 13 

Everyone Has a Mission 14 

Characteristics of Children 15 

Doubting the Word of Children 16 

Early Religion of Children 17 

Teaching Godliness to Children 18 

Youth ig 

Old Age 20 

Parents 21 

Home 22 

Teachers 23 

Teachers 24 

Knowledge Shall Vanish 25 

Worthless Knowledge 26 

Knowledge of God 27 

Growth Requires Time 28 

Growth by Doing 29 



Feb. I.J CHRIST WITHIN US. 38 

1. 

CHRIST WITHIN US. 

God would make known what is the riches of the 
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles ; which is 
Christ in you, the hope of glory. — Col. i, 27. 

THE Spirit was not given, we are told, 
because Jesus was not yet glorified. It 
was necessary for the Son to disappear as an 
outward authority, in order that he might re- 
appear as an inward principle of life. Our 
salvation is no longer God manifested in 
Christ without us, but a Christ within us, the 
hope of glory. 

2. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the 
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all 
things, and bring all things to your remembrance, what- 
soever I have said unto you. — John xiv, 26. 

CHRIST is the voice of God without the 
man — the Spirit is the voice of God 
within the man. The highest revelation is 
not made by Christ, but comes directly from 
the universal Mind to our minds. The Holy 
Ghost may mingle with man in three ways — 
with his body, and then you have what is 
called a miracle; with his spirit, and then you 
3 



34 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Feb. 3. 

have that exalted feeling which finds vent in 
what is called ** tongues;" or with his intel- 
lect, and then you have prophecy. 

3. 

THE TRINITY. 

I WILL pray the Father, and he shall give you 
another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever. 
— John xiv, 16. 

IN that Unity of Essence there are three 
living Powers, which we call Persons, dis- 
tinct from each other. 

A man's will is not his affections, neither 
are his affections his thoughts, and it would be 
imperfect and incomplete to say that these are 
mere qualities in the man. ... It is the law 
of being, that in proportion as you rise from 
lower to higher life the parts are more dis- 
tinctly developed, while yet the unity becomes 
more entire. You find, for example, in the 
lowest forms of animal life one organ per- 
forms several functions, one organ being at the 
same time heart and brain and blood vessels. 
But when you come to man you find all these 
various functions existing in different organs, 
and every organ more distinctly developed ; 
and yet the unity of a man is a higher unity 



Feb. 3.1 THE TRINITY, ^5 

than that of a limpet. . . . We apply all this 
to the mind of God. . . . The first power of 
consciousness in which God is made known 
to us is as the Father, the Author of our 
being. He is the Author of all life. In this 
sense he is not merely our Father as Chris- 
tians, but the Father of mankind ; and not 
merely the Father of mankind, but the Father 
of creation. . . . He is the Lord of life. In 
this respect God to us is as law— as the col- 
lected laws of the universe ; and therefore to 
offend against law and bring down the re- 
sult of transgressing law is, said in Scripture 
language, to provoke the wrath of God the 
Father. 

The second way through which the person- 
ality and consciousness of God has been re- 
vealed to us is as the Son. 

There is a nearer, a closer, and a more en- 
during relation in which God stands to us — 
that is, the relation of the Spirit. If a man 
keep the commandments "God dwelleth in 
him, and he in God." So that the spiritual 
manifestation of God to us is that whereby he 
blends himself with the soul of man. 



36 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 4. 

4 

THE EMPTINESS OF LIFE. 

Rejoice, O young man, in thy yoath ; and let thy 
heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the 
ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but 
know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee 
into judgment. — Eccles. xi, 9, 



Y 



OU ask what is the meaning of Keble*s 
line: 



'* Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall?'* 

He has just said, that the earth wotild not be 
worth having, if it were all, even though af- 
fection's kiss brightens it often ; and then 
compares these kisses to spangles on the pall. 
Who would be in a coffin for the pleasure of 
having a velvet pall with spangles over him "^ 
What matters it to the dead ? He means. Who 
would live this dead life for the sake of a few 
moments of affectionate happiness, or rather a 
good many, for he says *^ oft ? " I reply, **/ 

would.'* 

S. 

THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF LIFE. 

And it came to pass, that, while they communed to- 
gether and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went 
with them. But their eyes were holden that they should 
not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of 



Feb. 5.] THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF LIFE. 37 

communications are these that ye have one to another, as 
ye walk, and are sad ? — Luke xxiv, 15-17. 

AS we mix in life there comes, especially to 
sensitive natures, a temptation to distrust^ 
In young life we throw ourselves with un- 
bounded and glorious confidence on such as we 
think well of — an error soon corrected, for we 
soon find out — too soon — that men and women 
are not what they seem. Then comes disap- 
pointment ; and the danger is a reaction of des- 
olating and universal distrust. . . . The only 
preservation from this withering of tlie heart is 
love. The strength of affection is a proof not 
of the worthiness of the object, but of the large- 
ness of the soul which loves. There are three 
great principles in life which weave its warp and 
woof, apparently incompatible with each other, 
yet they harmonize, and, in their blending, cre- 
ate this strange life of ours. The first is, our fate 
is in our own hands, and our blessedness and 
misery is the exact result of our own acts. The 
second is, *' There's a divinity that shapes our 
ends, rough-hew them how we will." The third 
is, " The race is not to the swift, nor the battle 
to the strong;" but time and chance happen 
to them all. Accidents, human will, the shaping 
will of Deity; these things make up life. 



38 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 6. 

6. 

THE MEANING OF LIFE. 

But that on the good ground are they, which in 
an honest and good heart, having heard the word, 
keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. — Luke 
viii, 15. 

THIS life is the state of human babyhood. 
Life here is infancy. He who has not 
found out how directly or indirectly to make 
everything converge toward his soul's sanctifi- 
cation, has as yet missed the meaning of this 
life. 

7. 

YOUR LIFE WORK. 

For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but 
unto holiness. — i Thess. iv, 7. 

WHAT was it which nerved the apostle's 
soul to bear reproach and false witness.'* 
Was it not this.'* I have a mission; *^I am 
called to be an apostle through the will of 
God." Well, this should be our strength. 
Called to be a carpenter, a politician, a trades- 
man, a physician — is he irreverent who 
believes that? God sent me here to cut 
wood, to direct justly, to make shoes, to teach 
children. 



Feb. 9.] POSSIBILITIES. 39 

8. 

GUIDANCE. 

The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, 
and into the patient waiting for Christ. — 2 Thess. iii, 5. 

GOD has so decreed, that, except in child- 
hood, our dependence must be on our 
own souls. " The way of truth is slow, hard, 
winding, often turning on itself." Good and 
evil grow up in the field of the world almost 
inseparably. The scanning of error is neces- 
sary to the comprehension and belief of truth. 
Therefore it must be done solitarily. Nay, 
such an infallible guide could not be given 
us without danger. Such a one ever near 
would prove not a guide to us, but an hin- 
drance to the use of our own eyes and soul. 
Reverence for such a guide would soon de- 
generate into slavishness, passiveness, and 
prostration of mind. 

9. 

POSSIBILITIES. 

Take heed therefore, that the light which is in thee 
be not darkness. — Luke xi, 35. 

OTHE untold world of agony contained in 
that expression, " a lost soul ! " — agony 
exactly in proportion to the nobleness of 



40 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. lo. 

original powers. For it is a strange and 
mournful truth that the qualities which enable 
men to shine are exactly those which minister 
to the worst ruin. God's highest gifts — talent, 
beauty, feeling, imagination, power; they 
carry with them the possibility of the highest 
heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is 
by that which is highest in you that you may 
be lost. It is the awful warning, and not the 
excuse of evil, that the light which leads astray 
is light from heaven. 

lO. 

REPINING AT CIRCUMSTANCES. 

The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of 
thee : nor again the head to the feet, I have no need 
of you. — I Cor. xii, 21. 

THERE are few temptations more common 
to ardent spirits than that which leads 
them to repine at the lot in which they are 
cast, believing that in some other situation 
they could serve God better ; and therefore 
to every such man St. Paul speaks, telling 
him that it is his duty to try to be himself — 
simply to try to do his own duty (i Cor. 
xii) ; for here in this world we are nothing 
apart from its strange and curious clock- 



Feb. II.] SERVING GOD AT A LOSS. 41 

work ; and if each man had the spirit of 
self-surrender, the spirit of the cross, it would 
not matter to him whether he were doing 
tlie work of the mainspring or of one of the 
inferior parts. 

11. 

SERVING GOD AT A LOSS. 

And when they were come to the place, which is 
called Calvary, there they crucified him. — Luke xxiii, 

33- 

LET us get rid of that false notion, that we 
are sure to win if we are true to con- 
science ! No ! often — most often — you must 
serve God at a loss. Surely the cross should 
teach us that in this world doing right and 
being true is not ** the best policy," as the 
world understands it. The lives of the apos- 
tles, the lives of all God's best and noblest, 
should teach us this lesson. Beyond, beyond 
— ah, beyond the present we must look for 
victory. We are here to control the circum- 
stances in which we are placed, and trans- 
mute them, and get good and spirituality out 
of them. . . . All that circumstances have 
done when they make a man restless is just 
this, to show that he is not incorporated with 
the Rock of ages. 



42 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 12. 

12. 

CIRCUMSTANCES ARE SENT BY GOD. 

Joseph said unto them, Fear not : for am I in the 
place of God ? But as for you, ye thought evil against 
me ; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it 
is this day, to save much people alive. — Gen. 1, 19, 20. 

HEARTS are linked to hearts by God. The 
friend on whose fidelity you count, whose 
success in life flushes your cheek with honest 
satisfaction — that friend, given you by circum- 
stances over which you had no control, was 
God's own gift. 

18. 

ALL NATURE HELPS THE GOOD. 

We know that all things work together for good to 
them that love God. — Rom. viii, 28. 

MAN is the weakest and yet the strongest 
of living creatures — because he obeys 
the laws of nature he has the strength of the 
lion, the speed of the antelope ; he bids the 
sun be his painter, and the lightning carry his 
messages ; because he is the servant, therefore 
he is the master. This is precisely analogous 
to the way in which a man becomes spiritually 
strong. If he stands, upon his own will, takes 
his own way, the strongest fails at last. . . . 
It was no mere figure of poetry in Deborah's 



Feb. 14.] EVERYONE HAS A MISSION. 43 

triumphant song, ** The stars in their courses 

fought against Sisera." Everything fights 

against a man who is not on God's side; while 

he who does right, not because it is profitable, 

but because it is right, who loves the truth, 

arms himself with God's power — the universe 

is on his side. 

14. 

EVERYONE HAS A MISSION. 

This ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by 
transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. 
— Acts i, 25. 

EVERYONE has a mission in this world to 
accomplish. That is the destiny given 
him to work out. Judas had such a mission. 
God had appointed him to salvation by his 
call as truly as the other apostles. . . . Judas 
was sent into the world to work out his own 
salvation with fear and trembling. God " did 
not will the sinner's death." Surely, surely the 
Bible is plain enough on this point. But Judas 
would not accept his mission, and then that 
which was given in blessing turned to curse. 
His destiny crushed him : he went to his ^^;^ 
place, the place he had prepared for himself, 
not the place prepared by God. So it is with 
you and me. No decree of God has insured 



44 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 15. 

our misery. ^* All things work together for 
good to those who love God." But the same 
things work together for evil if they do not 
love God. 

15. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN. 

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and 
girls playing in the streets thereof. — Zech. viii, 5. 

THE characteristics of childhood are in- 
stability of character, unfixedness of opin- 
ion, and credulity, all of which, natural and 
even graceful in a child, are in a man weak- 
ness, unfitness for life, and folly. Manhood is 
truth, love, likeness to Christ. 

Do not ask a child to sacrifice all enjoyment 
for the sake of others ; but let him learn, first, 
not to enjoy at the expense or the disadvan- 
tage or suffering of another. To ask ** Why .^ " 
is the best Christian lesson for a child. Not 
the ''''why'' which is the language of disobedi- 
ence, but that ''why'' which demands for all 
phenomena a cause. It was this which led 
Moses on Mount Horeb to say, ^* I will now 
turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush 
is not burnt." So it was that Moses found out 
God. 



Feb. 17.] EARLY RELIGION OF CHILDREN, 45 

1 6. 

DOUBTING THE WORD OF CHILDREN. 

Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which 
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone 
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned 
in the depth of the sea. — Matt, xviii, 6. 

A MAN'S character and mind are molded 
for good or evil far more by the forms of 
imagination which surround his childhood, 
than by any subsequent scientific training. 

I would engage, if it were not a Satanic 
task, to make any child a liar by cross-question- 
ing every assertion, and showing him that I 
suspected every thought and feeling. He 
would soon learn to dwell in the region of 
plausibilities, and cease to breathe the fresh, 
free air of unconscious truth. 

17. 

EARLY RELIGION OF CHILDREN. 
Brethren, be not children in understanding: how- 
beit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be 
men. — i Cor. xiv, 20. 

WE expect in the religion of the child the 
experience which can only be true in the 
religion of the man. We force into their lips the 
language which describes the wrestling of the 
soul with God. It is twenty years too soon. 



46 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 18. 

God in his awfulness, the thought of mystery 
which scathes the soul, how can they know 
that yet before they have got the thews and 
sinews of the man's heart to master such a 
thought ? They know nothing yet — they ought 
to know nothing yet — of God but as the Father 
who is around their beds ; they ought to see 
nothing yet but heaven and angels ascending 
and descending. 

The time does come to every child, as it 
came to the childhood of Christ, when the love 
of the earthly parent is felt to be second to 
the love of the heavenly Father ; but this is 
not firsts ** for that is not first which is spirit- 
ual, but that which is natural." . . . You can- 
not force love to God. By no outrageous 
leaps, but by slow walking, is the spiritual love 
reached. 

18. 

TEACHING GODLINESS TO CHILDREN. 

Bodily exercise profitetli little ; but godliness is 
profitable unto all things, having promise of the life 
tfhat now is, and of that which is to come. — I Tim. 
iv, 8. 

YOU tell him [your son] that if he will be 
good, all men will love him. You say that 
honesty is the best policy, yet in your heart 



Feb. 19.] YOUTH. 47 

of hearts you know that you are leading him 
on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he 
loved by all 1 In proportion as he, your son, 
is like Christ, he will be loved, not by the 
many, but by the few. Yet you were right in 
teaching your son this ; you told him what 
was true, truer than he could comprehend. 
It is better to be honest and good, better 
than he can know or dream, better even in 
this life; better by so much as being good 
is better than having good. 

19. 

YOUTH. 

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?, 
by taking heed thereto according to thy word. — Psalm 
cxix, 9. 

THIS is the lesson we press upon the young: 
Keep unspotted from the world. My young 
brethren, let it be impressed upon you — now 
is a time, infinite in its value for eternity, 
which will never return again. Sleep not; 
learn that there is a very solemn work of 
heart which must be done while the stillness 
of the garden of your Gethsemane gives you 
time. Now, or never. The treasures at your 
command are infinite. Treasures of time, 



48 



THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 20. 



treasures of youth, treasures of opportunity 
that grown-up men would sacrifice everything 
they have to possess. 

20. 

OLD AGE. 

Even to your old age I am he ; and even to hoar 
hairs will I carry you : I have made, and I will bear ; 
even I will carry, and will deliver you. — Isa. xlvi, 4. 

"XIZHEN the first gray hairs become visible 
' '^ — when the unwelcome truth fastens it- 
self upon the mind that a man is no longer 
going up the hill, but down, and that the 
sun is already westering, he looks back on 
things behind. Now this is a natural feel- 
ing, but is it the high Christian tone of feel- 
ing } We who have an inheritance incor- 
ruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
away, what have we to do with things past? 
What matter if, as the outward perish, the 
inward is renewed day by day ? What matter 
if we see it [the passing of youthful freshness] 
in those that are dear to us — if we know 
that in them, too, the same glorious repro- 
duction is taking place .'^ So is the joy of old 
age. Deep, calm, nearness to God. 



Feb. 22.] HOME. 49 

21. 

PARENTS. 
Children, obey your parents in all things: for this 
is well pleasing unto the Lord. P'athers, provoke not 
your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. — CoL 
iii, 20, 21. 

THERE is scarcely one here who cannot 
trace back his present religious character 
to some impression, in early life, from one or 
other of his parents — it may be from a tone, a 
look, a word, a habit, or even bitter, miserable 
exclamation. 

No one ever loved child, brother, sister, too 
much. It is not the intensity of affection, but 
its interference with truth and duty, that makes 
idolatry. And hence Christ says, " If any man 
love father or mother more than me, he is not 
worthy of me." 

22. 
HOME. 

And he arose, and came to his father. But when 
he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had 
compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed 
him. — Luke xv, 20. 

T^HE friend, the husband, the citizen, are 

* formed at the domestic hearth. Influence 

is given at home. It is God's plan. He gave 

the father to impart strength of will, and the 

4 



50 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 23. 

mother, tenderness of affection. Home is the 
one place in all this world where hearts are sure 
of each other. It is the place of confidences. 
Let a man travel where he will, home is the 
place to which " his heart untraveled fondly 
turns." He is to double all pleasure there. 
He is to divide all pain. A happy home is the 
single spot of rest which a man has upon this 
earth lor the cultivation of his noblest sensi- 
bilities. And now, my brethren, if that be the 
description of home, is God's place of rest your 
home ? Walk abroad and alone by night. That 
awful other world, in the stillness and the sol- 
emn deep of the eternities above, is it your 
home? 

23. 
TEACHERS. 

They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness, as 
the stars forever and ever. — Dan. xii, 3. 

GOD appointed a princess to instruct Moses, 
as if to honor the teacher's office. There 
are great mistakes on this point. People say, 
'* Any man will do." But your watch spring 
is broken — do you give it to a blacksmith ? 
Its wheels are deranged — do you confide it to 
a wheelwright ? No ; it is too delicate. Can 



Feb. 24.] TEACHERS. 51 



a common mind guide that delicate, ethereal, 
mysterious thing — a child's soul ? We must un- 
derstand human nature, read hearts. We want 
first-rate men. Thirty-five hundred years ago 
an Egyptian princess took a poor man's child 
and taught it. The result of that education is 
not over vet. It is not views which mold char- 
acter, but a spirit ; since our mysterious being 
is only capable of being stirred by the higher 
springs of action, trust, reliance, reverence, 
love ; and when trust is gone, neither wisdom 
nor truth from the lips of a teacher can avail 
anything. 

24. 

TEACHERS. 

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. — Matt. 
XXV, 40. 

AN humble teacher in a school, or a mission- 
ary, can often but only just live. Gifts 
that are showy and gifts that please — before 
these the world yields her homage, while the 
lowly teachers of the poor and ignorant are for- 
gotten. Only remember that in the sight of the 
everlasting Eye, theoneiscreating sounds which 
perish with the hour that gave them birth, the 
other is doing a work which is forever. 



53 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 25. 

To teach a few Sunday school children 
week after week commonplace, simple truths 
— persevering in spite of dullness and mean 
capacities — is a more glorious occupation than 
the highest meditations or creations of genius 
which edify or instruct only our own solitary 
soul. This is the lesson for all ; for teachers 
who lay their heads down at night, sickening 
over their thankless task. Remember the 
power of indirect influences, those which distil 
from a life, not from a sudden, brilliant effort. 
The former never fail, the latter often. Not 
in the flushing of a pupil's cheek, or the 
glistening of an attentive eye ; not in the 
shining results of an examination, does your 
real success lie. It lies in that invisible 
influence on character, which He alone can 
read who counts the seven thousand name- 
less ones in Israel. 

25. 

KNOWLEDGE SHALL VANISH. 

Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 
— I Cor. xiii, 8. 



" Y^ NOWLEDGE shall vanish away," for it 

*^ is but a temporary state of the human 

mind. For instance, that of the physician. 



Ftb. 26.] WORTHLESS KNOWLEDGE. 53 

which arises out of the existence of disease ; 
where there is no disease, his knowledge would 
disappear. So also of the know^ledge of the 
lawyer, which depends on human crime ; wxre 
there no wrongs done, the necessity for legal 
knowledge would be at an end. 

26. 

WORTHLESS KNOWLEDGE. 

If any man think that he knoweth anything, he 
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. — i Cor. 
viii, 2. 

PAUL spoke of instruction not merely in 
history, geography, or grammar, but also 
of instruction in the Bible as worthless, with- 
out training in humility and charity. He 
said, '* Mere knowledge is worth little ; " but 
then by knowledge he meant not merely 
knowlcdo^e without Christian doctrine, but 
knowledge w-ithout love. ... **As he ought 
to know." That single w^ord "as" is the 
point of the sentence, for it is not what \o 
know, but how to know, w^iich includes all 
real knowledge. 



54 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Feb. 27. 

27. 

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

Be not conformed to this world : but be ye trans- 
formed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove 
what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of 
God. — Rom. xii, 2. 

AFTER twenty years God met Jacob again; 
but this second intercourse was of a very 
different character. It was no longer God the 
Forgiver, God the Protector, God the covenant- 
ing Love, that met Jacob ; but God the Awful, 
the Unnamable, whose breath blasts. You 
would have expected the darker vision of ex- 
perience to come first. First the storm strug- ' 
gle of the soul; then the vision of peace. . . . 
The awful feelings about Life and God 
are not those which characterize our earlier 
years. It is quite natural that in the first 
espousals of the soul in its freshness to God, 
bright and hopeful feelings should be the pre- 
dominant or only ones. Joy marks, and ought 
to mark, early religion. 



Feb. 29. ] GRO WTH B Y DOING, 55 

28. 

GROWTH REQUIRES TIME. 

And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
should cast seed into the ground ; and should sleep, and 
rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow 
up, he knoweth not how. — Mark iv, 26, 27. 

AFTER long years work is visible. In 
agriculture you cannot see the growth. 
Pass that country two months after, and there 
is a difference. We acquire firmness and ex- 
perience incessantly. Every action, every 
word, every meal is part, of our trial and our 
discipline. We are assuredly ripening or else 
blighting. We are not conscious of those 
changes which go on quietly and gradually in 
the soul. We only count the shocks in our 
journey. Ambitions die, grace grows, as life 
goes on. 

29. 

GROWTH BY DOING. 

I AM the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth 
in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; 
for without me ye can do nothing. — John xv, 5. 

TT is by what we do, and not by what is done 
^ for us that we become strong or good. Is 
not all our higher life a perpetual struggle to 



56 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Feb. 29. 

reach a horizon of duty, which is unbounded 
and ever widening before us, as we fulfill its 
claims ? We do not reach spirituality of char- 
acter by spasmodic and unnatural efforts to 
crush the nature that is within us, but by slow 
and patient care to develop and disengage it 
from its evil. 



CQai^gh 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



MARCH. 

Character i 

Our Body 2 

Body, Soul, and Spirit 3 

The Mind 4 

How to Cultivate Memory 5 

The Memory of the Wicked 6 

Conscience 7 

Conviction 8 

Our Will 9 

Religion 10 

Worship II 

The Worship of the Virgin 12 

The Heathen .- 13 

Wise Men from the East . , 14 

Missions 15 

The Church 16 

The Unitarian View 17 

Christianity 18 

What is Prayer ? 19 

Absurd Prayers 20 

How to Pray 21 

Teach Us How to Pray 22 

Baptism 23 

Infant Baptism 24 

The Two Sacraments 25 

The Lord's Supper 26 

The Sabbath Abolished to Christians 27 

The Sabbath a Law Now 28 

The Sabbath Necessary Now 29 

The Puritan Sabbath 30 

1'he Sabbath of Eternity 31 



Mar. I.] CHARACTER. 59 

1. 

CHARACTER. 

Train up a child in the way he should go : and when 
he is old, he will not depart from it. — Prov. xxii, 6. 

GOD'S way from old time has been to rely 
upon the training of the heart and habits 
for the illumination of the understanding. 
You may teach a child these truths in ten 
minutes; but to teach them as God would 
have them taught, to teach them in any way 
that shall not be worthless, that demands a 
long, holy, obedient, humble life. Nothing 
falsifies the character like softness ; the want 
of power to say No when it would give pain. 
We have one thing, and only one, to do here 
on earth — to win the character of heaven be- 
fore we die. 

2. 
OUR BODY. 

What ! know ye not that your body is the temple of 
the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, 
and ye are not your own ? For ye are bought with a 
price. — I Cor. vi, 19, 20. 

'X'HE Ugliest man I ever knew I actually at 
* last thought handsome ; and I do not be- 
lieve that any beauty would seem surpassingly 
beautiful after it had once reminded of folly 



60 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 3. 

or evil. It is the outward form of the body 
alone which is transitory. Itself shall be re- 
newed — a nobler, more glorious form, fitted 
for a higher and spiritual existence. . . ,. Sins 
of sensuality and animal indulgence are against 
the body. Our bodies, which are " members " 
of Christ, to be ruled by his Spirit, become 
by such sins unfit for immortality with Christ. 
This is an awful truth. Sins committed against 
the body affect that wonderful tissue which we 
call the nervous system ; the source of all our 
acutest suffering and intensest blessing is ren- 
dered so susceptible by God as to be at once 
our punishment or reward. There is not a sin 
of indulgence, gluttony, intemperance, or licen- 
tiousness of any form which does not write its 
terrible retribution on our bodies. 

3. 

BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT. 

I PRAY God your whole spirit and soul and body be 
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. — I Thess. v, 23. 

\ 17 HEN the apostle speaks of the body, 

^ ^ what he means is the animal life — that 

which we share in common with beasts, birds, 

and reptiles ; . . . that which he calls *^ soul " 



Mar. 4.J THE MIND, 61 

is the same as that which he calls, in another 
place, the ^'natural man." These powers are 
divisible into two branches — the intellectual 
powers and the moral sense. The intellectual 
powers man has by nature. Man need not be 
regenerated in order to possess the power of 
reasoning. The moral sense distinguishes be- 
tween right and wrong. . . . By the spirit he 
means that life in man which, in his natural 
state, is in such an embryo condition that it 
can scarcely be said to exist at all — that which 
is called out into power and vitality by regen- 
eration. The body — the human affections and 
passions ; the soul, according to the philosphy 
of that age — the rational powers ; and the 
spirit — that ox\. which God directly operates, 
and which appreciates the things of God. 

4. 

THE MIND. 

This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, 
and honoreth me with their lips ; but their heart is far 
from me. — Matt, xv, 8. 

HP] is Mind. Mind, properly speaking, has 
wo place. Of love, generosity, thought — 
can you say where ? 



63 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 5. 

5. 

HOW TO CULTIVATE MEMORY. 

Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, 
I do remember my faults this day. — Gen. xli, g. 

MEMORY depends on two circumstances — 
attention and the laws of association. 
No one can hope to remember who has not 
acquired the power of concentrating his atten- 
tion. We recollect circumstances witnessed 
and things learned in childhood, whereas we 
forget the events of yesterday ; and this be- 
cause when we come into the world all is new, 
startling, and arrests the attention. In later 
life we are familiar with all, and our attention is 
languid. . . . The highest of all is that mem- 
ory which suggests by analogy. It is this which 
furnishes the orator with illustrations and 
parallels. . . . If your verbal or your contiguous 
memory be tenacious, you may retain the cir- 
cumstances ; but if not, all will be confused. 
But if you call in the aid of eyesight, localizing 
this battle there, and tracing that invasion 
from town to town, you have got a local habita- 
tion as well as a name for your facts. Without 
method memory is useless. Detached facts 
are practically valueless. Persons not accus- 
tomed to it imagine that a speech is learnt by 



Mar. 6.] THE MEMORY OF THE WICKED. 63 

heart. If anyone attempted that plan, either 
he must have a marvelous memory or else he 
would break down three times out of five. It 
simply depends upon correct arrangement. 
The words and sentences are left to the 
moment ; the thoughts methodized before- 
hand. 

6. 

THE MEMORY OF THE WICKED. 

There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. — 
Isa. Ivii, 21. 

IT only needs that the body which buries 
^ recollection for a time should be dissolved, 
and then there begins the eternity of a hell of 
recollections — when every act of bygone guilt 
which has not been sunk in the blood of 
Christ shall be as fresh and vivid before a sin- 
ner's eyes as it was at the moment when it was 
committed. . . . Brethren, each of us knows 
what his past has been. I ask you, Will it 
bear to come up again ? Or do your hearts 
tell you there is meaning of terrible emphasis 
in these words, *'mire and dirt?'* If so, 
there is but one way to keep it all hidden in 
the heart's depths. It is to have it buried 
there by the transforming, purifying, calming 
power of Christ. 



64 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 7. 



7. 

CONSCIENCE. 

If our heart condemn us not, then have we con- 
fidence toward God. — I John iii, 21. 

CONSCIENCE is the supreme tribunal 
erected within a man's own soul. There 
is no appeal to the opinion of privileged per- 
sons. The apostle Paul would not allow them 
to condemn for conscientious acts. ^^ Let no 
man judge you." 

Do not fancy yourself safe and forgiven be- 
cause you feel no burden. There is such a 
thing as a laden slave sleeping on his burden. 
The first stages of mortification alone are pain- 
ful ; after that the benumbed senses cease to 
warn. The frost-bitten man is warned by 
strangers. So is it in paralysis of conscience. 

8. 

CONVICTION. 

It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor 
anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, 
or is made weak. — Rom. xiv, 21. 

SEIZE the moment of strong conviction, of 
tenderness, of apprehension. Quick ! 
quick ! it will not come again. Do what 
seems to you to be right ; it is only so that you 
will at last learn by the grace of God to see 



Mar. 9.] OUR WILL, 65 

clearly what is right. A man thinks within 
himself that it is God's law and God's will 
that he should act thus and thus. You must 
so act. He is responsible for the opinions he 
holds, and still more for the way in which he 
arrived at them. *' You must obey your con- 
science." For no man's conscience gets so 
seared by doing what is wrong unknowingly, 
as by doing that which appears to be wrong 
to his conscience. 

9. 
OUR WILL. 

I CAN do all things through Christ which strengthen- 
eth me. — Phil, iv, 13. 

IT is will that makes the difference between 
man and man; not knowledge, not opinions, 
not devoutness, not feeling, but will — the power 
to be. It is the belief of the savage that the 
spirit of every enemy he slays enters into him, 
and becomes added to his own, accumulating 
a warrior's strength; therefore he slays all he 
can. It is true in the spiritual warfare. Every 
sin you slay — the spirit of that sin passes into 
you transformed into strength. The hardest, 
the severest, the last lesson which man has to 
learn upon the earth, is submission to the will 
of God. It is the hardest lesson because to 
5 



66 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. to. 

our blinded eyesight it often seems a cruel will. . 

All that saintly experience ever had to teach 

resolves itself into this, the lesson how to say 

affectionately, " Not as I will, but as thou wilt." 

Slowly and stubbornly our hearts acquiesce 

in that. 

. lO. 

RELIGION. 
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the 
Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their 
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. 
— James i, 27. 

RELIGION is a thing of the heart, and not 
of the intellect ; as the Bible so strongly 
tells us, ** The world by wisdom knew not God.'* 
Religion is the banquet of the spirit, not the 
feast of the mind ; and therefore the danger is 
ever present when men begin to listen to the 
sermon as a manifestation of intellectual 
force, and not for its spiritual power. 

11. 

WORSHIP. 
The hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- 
shipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : 
for the Father seeketh such to worship him. — John iv, 23. 

REVERENCE, veneration, awe, are a class 
of feelings which belong to the imagina- 
tion, and are neither good nor bad ; they may 



Mar. T2.] THE WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN. 67 

go along with religion, but also they may not. 
A man may kneel to sublime things, yet never 
have bent his heart to goodness and purity. A 
man may be reverential, and yet impure. What 
we mean by ** worship" is the highest reverence 
of the soul: adoration, awe; it may be, even 
vague devoutness; "Ye know not what/' It is 
not merely what a man professes to reverence 
that constitutes worship. To be spiritual, wor- 
ship must be intelligent. 

12. 

THE WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN. 
The angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou 
that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee : blessed art 
thou among women. — Luke i, 28. 

I SPENT last evening with Mrs. Jameson 
and Lady Byron. The conversation turned 
at first chiefly on the gradual changes in the 
feeling toward the Virgin. It seems that the 
earliest appearance of the Virgin and Child 
dates in the fifth century ; before that the 
Virgin was alone. The first representations of 
this change bore a striking resemblance to the 
heathen statues and relievos of Juno nursing 
the infant Mars. Then came pictures in 
which the Virgin is represented as crowned 
by her Son — at first kneeling before him, then 



68 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 13. 

sitting a little lower than he, then on a level 
with him. For many ages she appears as in- 
tercessor between Christ the Judge and the 
guilty earth. Mariolatry contains the sublime 
truth of the adorableness and heavenliness of 
female purity. Let us say, that what they wor- 
ship ignorantly is Christ. Whom they ignorantly 
worship, let us declare unto them. Christ, their 
unknown God. Do not let us satisfy ourselves 
by saying as a watchword, "Christ, not Mary;" 
say, rather, *'In Christ are all that they find in 
Mary." The mother in the Son, the womanly 
in the soul of Christ. Divine honor to the fem- 
inine side of his character, joyful and unvary- 
ing acknowledgment that in Christ there is rev- 
elation of the divineness of submission and love 
and purity and long-suffering. 

13. 

THE HEATHEN. 

Ask of me, and I thall give thee the heathen for 
thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for thy possession. — Psalm ii, 8. 

MAN is God*s child, and the sin of man con- 
sists in perpetually living as if it were 
false. It is the sin of the heathen ; and what 
is your mission to him but to tell him he is 
God's child and not living up to his privilege? 



Mar. 14.] WISE MEN FROM THE EAST, 69 

14. 

WISE MEN FROM THE EAST. 

In the days of Herod the king, behold, there came 
wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he 
that is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen his star 
in the east, and are come to worship him. — Matt, ii, i, 2. 

THE Magian system was called the system 
of light about seven centuries before 
Christ. A great reformer (Zoroaster) had ap- 
peared, who either restored the system to its 
purity, or created out of it a new system. He 
said that lidit is eternal — that the Lord of the 
universe is light, but because there was an 
eternal light there was also an eternal possi- 
bility of the absence of light. Light and dark- 
ness, therefore, were the eternal principles of 
the universe — not equal principles, but one 
the negation of the other. He taught that the 
soul of man needs light — a light external to 
itself, as well as in itself. As the eye cannot 
see in darkness, and is useless, so is there a 
capacity in the soul for light. . . . The law given 
by the Magian, revealed by the eternal stars, was 
"thelawofthe Medes and Persians, which alter- 
eth not." ** Let us meditate on the adorable 
Light; it shall guide our intellects,'* is the 
most sacred verse of the Hindoo sacred books. 



70 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 15. 

15. 

MISSIONS. 

And he said unto ihem, Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature. — Mark xvi, 15. 

IN matters worldly, the more occupations, 
duties, a man has, the more certain is he of 
doing all imperfectly. In the things of God 
this is reversed. . . . He who is most liberal in 
the case of a foreign famine or a distant mission 
will be found to have only learned more liberal 
love toward the poor and the unspiritualized of 

his own land. 

16. 

THE CHURCH. 

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto 
ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to 
meet the bridegroom. And five of them weie wise, and 
five were foolish. — Matt, xxv, i, 2. 

THERE is a Church visible and a Church 
invisible ; the latter consists of those spir- 
itual persons who fulfill the notion of the ideal 
Church; the former is the Church as it exists in 
any particular age, embracing within it all who 
profess Christianity, whether they be proper or 
improper members of its body. ... It is of the 
visible Church Paul writes, when he reproves 
their particular errors; and Christ, too, speaks 



Mar. 17.] THE UNITARIAN VIEW, 71 

of the same in such parables as tliat of the 
net gathering in fishes both good and bad, 
and the field of wheat which was mingled 
with tares. 

17. 

THE UNITARIAN VIEW. 

After that ye have known God, or rather are known 
of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly 
elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage ? 
— Gal. iv, 9. 

THE Unitarian view is that God requires 
nothing to reconcile him to us, that he is 
reconciled already, that the only thing requisite 
is to reconcile man to God. It also declares 
that there is no wrath in God toward sinners, 
for punishment does not manifest indignation. 
Nothing can be more false, unphilosophical, 
and unscriptural. . . . Take one passage [the 
text. Gal. iv, 9] ; Paul is there describing the 
Christian state, and he declares that the being 
recognized of God is more characteristic of 
the Gospel state than recognizing God. 
" Know God." Here is a man reconciled to 
God. "Art known of him." Here is God 
reconciled to man. Paul holds it a more ad- 
equate representation of the Gospel to say, 
Ye are known of God," that is, God is rec- 



ti 



72 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Mar. i8. 

onciled to you — than to say, Ye know God, 
that is, ye are reconciled to God. 

The Unitarian maintains a divine humanity 
— a blessed, blessed truth. There is a truth 
more blessed still — the humanity of Deity. 
Before the world was there was that in the 
mind of God which we may call the humanity 
of his Divinity. It is called in Scripture the 
Word, the Son, the form of God. 

18. 

CHRISTIANITY. 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, 
and with all thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thyself. — 
Luke X, 27. 

CHRISTIAN life, brethren, is not rest. 
** It is high time to awake out of sleep." 
Christian life is not making time pass away 
comfortably. " Woe unto them that are at ease 
in Zion.*' Christian life is not reward. " If 
in this life only we have hope in Christ/* then 
"we are of all men most miserable.'* Chris- 
tian life is work, trial, earnestness, victory. To 
adore Christ, love Christ, trust Christ — that is 
Christianity. 



Mar. 20.] ABSURD PRAYERS. 73 

19. 

WHAT IS PRAYER? 

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father 
which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. — Matt, 
vi, 9. 

WHAT is prayer.? To connect every 
thought with the thought of God. To 
look on everything as his work and his ap- 
pointment. To submit every thought, wish, 
and resolve to him. To feel his presence so 
that it shall restrain us even in our wildest joy. 
That is prayer. Prayer is that communion of 
the mind with God through which our will 
becomes at last merged into his will. The 
highest prayer or communion with God is a 
life of love. 

20. 

ABSURD PRAYERS. 

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that 
ye may consume it upon your lusts. — James iv, 3. 

OUR vindictive feelings we impute to God. 
We would revenge, therefore we think 
he would. And in this spirit, " Forgive us *' 
means ** Forego thy vengeance. Do not retali- 
ate. I have injured thee, but lo ! I apologize; 
I lay in the dust. Bear no malice, indulp;e no 
rancor, O God." This is the heathen prayer 



74 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 21. 

which we offer up to God. In our purest 
moods, when we kneel to pray, or gather round 
the altar, down into the very holy of holies 
sweep these foul birds of the air, villain fancies, 
demon thoughts. The germ of life, the small 
seed of impression, is gone — where, you know 
not. Inattentiveness of spirit produced by 
want of spiritual interest is the first cause. 

21. 

HOW TO PRAY. 

I WILL pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the 
understanding also. — I Cor. xiv, 15. 

** r^OT> is in heaven, and thou upon earth : 
^J therefore let thy words be few." To 
men we use rhetoric, eloquence, because they 
are influenced by it. To God we use the sim- 
plest, shortest words we can find, because elo- 
quence is only air and noise to him. That 
prayer which does not succeed in moderating 
our wish, in changing the passionate desire 
into silent submission, the anxious tremulous 
expectation into silent surrender, is no true 
prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit 
of true prayer. . . . Pray till prayer makes you 
forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it 
into God's will. 



i^K 



Mar. 23.] BAPTISM. 7.) 

22. 

TEACH US HOW TO PRAY. 
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to 
heaven, and said. Father, the hour is come ; glorify thy 
Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. — John xvii, i. 

MY Saviour, fill up the blurred and blotted 
sketch which my clumsy hand has drawn 
of a divine life, with the fullness of thy per- 
fect picture. I feel the beauty which I cannot 
realize : robe me in thine unutterable purity. 
Bring into captivity every thought to the obe- 
dience of Christ. Take what I cannot give; my 
heart, body, thoughts, time, abilities, money, 
health, strength, nights, days, youth, age, and 
spend them in thy service, O my crucified 
Master, Redeemer, God. O, let not these be 
mere words ! Whom have I in heaven but thee.'^ 
and there is none upon earth that I desire in 
comparison of thee. My heart is athirst for 
God, for the living God. When shall I come and 
appear before God ? 

23. 

BAPTISM. 
Then cometh Jesus from Galilee lo Jordan unto John, 
to be baptized of him. — Matt, iii, 13. 

\ 17 HEN it is objected to the Romanist that 

^^ there is no evidence in the life of the 

baptized child different from that given by the 



76 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Mar. 23. 

unbaptized, he replies, **The miracle is invisi- 
ble." . . . In other words, Christ has declared 
that it is with everyone born of the Spirit as 
with the wind, *' Thou hearest the sound 
thereof." But the Romanist distinctly holds 
that you cannot hear the sound — that the wind 
hath blown, but there is no sound; that the 
Spirit hath descended, and there are no fruits 
whereby the tree is know^n. 

The Catechism says : In baptism ... I was 
77iade a child of God. Yes, coronation makes 
a sovereign ; but, paradoxical as it may seem, 
it can only niake one who is a sovereign al- 
ready. 

In the Acts of the Apostles, Cornelius is 
baptized. On what grounds? To manufac- 
ture him into a child of God, or because he 
was the child of God ? . . . The argument of 
Peter was very natural. He has the Spirit, 
therefore, give him the sy??ibol of the Spirit. 
Let it be revealed to others what he is. He is 
heir to the inheritance, therefore give him the 
little deeds. He is of royal lineage — put the 
crown upon his head. He is a child of God — 
baptize him. 

*' Who shall forbid water, seeing these have 
received the Holy Ghost as well as we .'^ " 



Mar. 24.] INFANT BAPTISM. 77 

24. 

INFANT BAPTISM. 

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the 
wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the hus- 
band : else were your children unclean ; but now are 
they holy. — I Cor. vii, 14. 

THE very fundamentjl idea out of which 
infant baptism arises is, that the impres- 
sion produced upon the mind and character 
of the child by the Christian parent makes 
the child one of a Christian community ; 
and therefore, as Peter argued that Cornelius 
had received the Holy Ghost and so was to 
be baptized, just in the same way, as they 
are adopted into the Christian family and 
receive a Christian impression, the children 
of Christian parents are also to be baptized. 
Observe, also, the important truth, namely, 
the sacredness of the impression which arises 
from the close connection between parent 
and child. . . . There is scarcely one here 
who cannot trace back his present religious 
character to some impression, in early life, 
from one or other of his parents — a tone, a 
look, a word, a habit. 



78 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 25. 

25. 

THE TWO SACRAMENTS. 

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, 
ye do show the Lord's death till he come. — i Cor. xi, 26. 

THE Roman Catholic has seven sacraments; 
we have but two. . . . God has divinely 
ordained two material acts, to represent the 
truth that all nature is holy when everything 
in it reveals his sacredness to men ; that all 
acts are holy when done in the spirit of Christ. 
Water, the simplest element, represents the 
sacredness and awfulness of all things. By 
the consecration of the commonest act of life 
— a meal — every act is made holy, 

26. 

THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, 
and gave unlo them, saying, This is my body which is 
given for you : this do in remembrance of me. — Luke 
xxii, 19. 

THE reason for the institution of the Lord's 
Supper was, first, as a memorial of the 
Redeemer's sacrifice. . . . The second reason 
was to keep in mind Christ's second advent : 
'' Till he come." When Christ left this world 
it was with a promise that he would return 



Mar. 27.] THE SABBATH ABOLISHED. 79 

again. So then, there are two feelings which 
belong to this Supper — abasement and triumph; 
abasement because everything that tells of 
Christ's sacrifice reminds us of human guilt ; 
and triumph, because the idea of his coming 
again, *Svithout sin unto salvation,'* is full of 
highest rapture. 

27. 
THE SABBATH ABOLISHED TO CHRISTIANS. 

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, 
or in respect of a holyday, or of the new moon, or ol 
the Sabbath days : which are a shadow of things to come ; 
but the body is of Christ. — Col. ii, i6, 17. 

TF the fourth commandment be binding still, 
^ that clause is unrepealed — ^*no manner of 
work;" and so, too, is that other important 
part, the sanctification of the seventh day and 
not the first. If the fourth commandment be 
not binding in these points, then there is noth- 
ing left but the broad, comprehensive ground 
taken by the apostle. The whole Sabbath is 
a shadow of things to come. ... To whom 
may the Sabbath safely become a shadow.'* I 
reply, he that has the mind of Christ may exer- 
cise discretionary lordship over the Sabbath 
day. He who is in possession of the substance 
may let the shadow go. A man in health has 



80 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 28. 

done with the prescriptions of the physician. 
But for an unspiritual man to regulate his 
hours and amount of rest by his desires is just 
as preposterous as for an unhealthy man to rule 
his appetites by his sensations. Remain apart 
from Christ, and then you are under the law; 
the fourth commandment is as necessary for 
you as for the Israelites. 

28. 

THE SABBATH A LAW NOW. 

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. — Exod. 
XX, 8. 

TO recklessly loosen the hold of a nation on 
the sanctity of the Lord's Day would be 
most mischievous — to do so willfully would be 
an act almost diabolical. 

Had this law been given in all its purity to 
the Jews, instead of turning every week day 
into a Sabbath they would have transformed 
every Sabbath into a week day. . . . There- 
fore a law was given, specializing a day, in 
order to lead them to the broader truth that 
every day is God's. Now so far as we are in 
the Jewish state the fourth commandment, 
even in its rigor and strictness, is wisely used 
by us; nay, we might say indispensable. For 



Mar. 29.] THE SABBA TH NECESSAR Y NO W. 81 



who is he who needs not this day ? . . . He 
who can dispense with it must be holy and 
spiritual indeed. And he who, still unholy 
and unspiritual, would yet dispense with it, is 
a man who would fain be wiser than his Maker. 

29. 

THE SABBATH NECESSARY NOW. 

The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 
Sabbath : therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the 
Sabbath. — Mark ii, 27, 28. 

THERE is in the Sabbath a substance, a 
permanent something — " a body " — which 
cannot pass away. ** The body is of Christ ; " 
the spirit of Christ is the fulfillment of the law. 
To have the spirit of Christ is to have fulfilled 
the law. Let us hear the mind of Christ in 
this matter, **The Sabbath was made for man, 
not man for the Sabbath." . . . The religion- 
ists of that day maintained that the necessities 
of man's nature must give way to the rigor of 
the enactment. He taught that the enactment 
must yield to man's necessities. They said 
the Sabbath was written in the book of the 
law; He said that it was written on man's 
nature. 
6 



82 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Mar. 30. 

Even in the contrivance of one day in seven, 
it was arranged by unerring wisdom. Just 
because the Sabbath was made for man, and 
not because man was ordained to keep the 
Sabbath day, you cannot tamper even with the 
iota, one day in seven. If you would sanctify 
all time, you set apart a Sabbath — not to show 
that other days are not intended to be sacred, 
but for the purpose of making them sacred. 

80. 

THE PURITAN SABBATH. 

If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from 
doing thy pleasure on my lioly day ; and call the Sabbath 
a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable ; and shalt 
honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine 
own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words : then shalt 
thou delight thyself in the Lord ; and I will cause thee 
to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee 
with the heritage of Jacob thy father : for the mouth of 
the Lord hath spoken it. — Isa. Iviii, 13, 14. 

T BELIEVE the stern rigor of the Puritan 
^ Sabbath had a grand effect upon the soul. 
Fancy a man thrown in upon himself with no 
permitted music, nor relaxation, nor literature, 
nor secular conversation — nothing but his 
Bible, his own soul, and God's silence ! What 



Mar. 31.] THE SABBATH OF ETERNITY, 83 

hearts of iron this system must have made. . . . 
I am persuaded, however, that the Sabbath 
must rest not on an enactment, but on the 
necessities of human nature. It is necessary 
not because it is commanded, but it is com- 
manded because it is necessary. 

31. 

THE SABBATH OF ETERNITY. 

There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the 
people of God. — Heb. iv, 9. [Rev. Ver.] 

IT is only when all the rest of our human na- 
ture is calmed that the spirit comes forth 
in full energy ; all the rest tires, the spirit 
never tires. Humbleness, awe, adoration, love, 
these, have in them no weariness ; so that when 
this frame shall be dissolved into the dust of 
the earth, and the mind which is merely fitted 
for this time world, learning by experience, 
shall have been superseded there, the spirit 
will enter upon that Sabbath of which all 
earthly Sabbaths are but the shadow — the Sab- 
bath of eternity. 



fZZ 



ppr^iL. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



APRIL. 

The Confessional i 

The Mass. 2 

The Bible 3 

God's Revelation 4 

The Simplicity of the Gospel 5 

Bible Promises 6 

Bible Threatenings 7 

Joseph, Moses, David, Isaiah 8 

Pharaoh, Balaam, Eli, Saul g 

Mary, John, James, Peter 10 

Judas, Pilate. . , 11 

Paul 12 

The Physician. 13 

The Minister's Fitness for Work 14 

A Minister's Success 15 

The Fate of a Sermon 16 

Vain Preaching 17 

Preaching Christ 18 

Time ^ • • • 19 

The Backward Look 20 

The Forward Look 21 

Our Race 22 

Language 23 

Society 24 

Socialism 25 

Mob Force 26 

The Evil of Party Spirit 27 

Liberty and Independence 28 

Superstition 29 

Idolatry 30 



April I.] THE CONFESSIONAL, 87 

1. 

THE CONFESSIONAL. 

Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God 
of your fathers, and do his pleasure. — Ezra x, ii. 

THE confessional, even through its mass of 
evil, proclaims to us the truth that through 
the light of Christ there has come into the 
world the necessity for a pure conscience. 

2. 

THE MASS. 

If one died for all, then were all dead : and that he 
died for all, that they which live should not henceforth 
live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, 
and rose again. — 2 Cor. v, 14, 15. 

ROME asserts that in the mass a true and 
proper sacrifice is offered up for the sins 
of all — that the offering of Christ is forever 
repeated. To this Protestantism has objected 
vehemently that there is but one offering once 
offered — an objection in itself entirely true — 
yet the Romish doctrine contains a truth which 
it is of importance to disengage from the gross 
and material form with which it has been over- 
laid. ... In one sense it is true to say that 
there is one offering once offered yij?r all. But 
it is equally true to say that one offering is 



88 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [April 3. 

valueless, except so far as it is completed and 
repeated in the life and self-offering of all. 
This is the Christian's sacrifice. Not mechan- 
ically completed in the miserable materialism 
of the mass, but spiritually in the life of all in 
whom the Crucified lives. 

The sacrifice of Christ is done over again in 
every life which is lived not to self, but to God. 

3. 

THE BIBLE. 

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he ex- 
pounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things con- 
cerning himself. — Luke xxiv, 27. 

THIS collection of books has been to the 
world what no other book has ever been 
to a nation. States have been founded on its 
principles. Kings rule by a compact based on 
it. Men hold the Bible in their hands when 
preparing to give solemn evidence affecting 
life, death, or property ; the battleship goes 
into action with one on board whose office is 
to expound it ; its prayers, its psalms, are 
language which we use when we speak to God ; 
eighteen centuries have found no holier, no 
diviner language. If ever there has been a 
prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart of a 



April 4.] GOD'S REVELATION. 89 

nation you are sure to find its bases in tlie 
Bible. There is no new religious idea given 
to the world, but it is merely the development 
of something given in the Bible. The very 
translations of it have fixed language and set- 
tled the idioms of speech. Germany and Eng- 
land speak as they speak because the Bible was 
translated. It has made the most illiterate 
peasant more familiar with history, customs, 
and geography of ancient Palestine than with 
the localities of his own country. This word 
of God has held a thousand nations for thrice 
a thousand years ; held them by an abiding 

power. 

4. 

GOD'S REVELATION. 

The natural man receiveth not the things of the 
Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither 
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
— I Cor. ii, 14. 

THE leaders in the world of literature are 
qualified to pronounce on a point of taste; 
the counselors of this world to weigh an amount 
of evidence. But in matters spirit tial they 
were as unfit to judge as a man without ear is 
to decide respecting harmony. The world, to 
sense seems stationary. To the eye of reason 
it moves with lightning speed. The judgment 



90 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April 5. 



of the senses is worth nothing in such matters. 
For every kind of truth a special capacity or 
preparation is indispensable. 

For a revelation of spiritual facts two things 
are needed: First a divine truth; next, a spirit 
which can receive it. Therefore, the apostle's 
whole defense resolved itself into this : The 
world by wisdom knew not God. And his vin- 
dication of his teaching was: Those revealed 
truths cannot be seen by the eye, heard by the 
ear, nor guessed by the heart ; they are visible, 
audible, imaginable, only to the spirit. " Eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have en- 
tered into the heart of man, the things which 
God hath prepared for them that love him. But 
God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." 
By the spiritually prepared, they are recognized 
as beautiful, though they be folly to all the 
world besides. 

8. 

THE SIMPLICITY OF THE GOSPEL. 

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled 
Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be cor- 
rupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. — 2 Cor. xi, 3. 

PEOPLE suppose simplicity of the Gospel 
means what a child or a plowman can un- 
derstand. Now if this be simplicity, evidently 



April 6.] BIBLE PROMISES. 91 

the simplicity of the Gospel was corrupted by 
Paul himself, for he is not simple. Who under- 
stands his deep writings ? Does one in a thou- 
sand ? Peter says there are things hard to un- 
derstand in Paul's epistles. . . .^^Simple'' means, 
according to Paul, unmixed or unadulterated. 

6. 

BIBLE PROMISES. 
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and 
precious promises ; that by these ye might be partakers 
of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that 
is in the world through lust. — 2 Peter i, 4. 

THE Scripture deals with principles ; not 
with individuals, but rather with states of 
humanity. Promises and threatenings are made 
to individuals because they are in a particular 
state of character, but they belong to all who 
are in that state, for *'God is no respecter of per- 
sons." The whole argument in the Epistle to the 
Romans is that the promises made to Abraham 
were not to his person, but to his faith ; and 
thus the apostle says, ** They who are of faith, 
are blessed with faithful Abraham." . . . Prom- 
ises belong to persons only so far as they are 
what they are taken to be; and consequently all 
unlimited promises made to individuals, so far 
as they are referred merely to those individuals, 



92 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April 7. 

are necessarily exaggerated and hyperbolical. 
They can only be true of One in whom that is 
fulfilled which was unfulfilled in them. 

7. 

BIBLE THREATENINGS. 
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against 
it; for their wickedness is come up before me. — Jonah i, 2. 

JONAH, by divine command, went through 
Nineveh proclaiming its destruction ; but 
the prophecy belonged to the state in which 
Nineveh was : it was true only while it re- 
mained in that state ; and therefore, as they 
repented, and their state was thus changed, 
the prophecy was left unfulfilled. 

8. 

JOSEPH, MOSES, DAVID, ISAIAH. 
I HAVE found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine 
own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. — Acts xiii, 22. 

**r^EAR ye not; I will nourish you and 
"■' your little ones." This is the Christian 
spirit, before the Christian times. Christ was 
in Joseph's heart, though not definitely in 
Joseph's creed. The eternal Word whispered 
in the souls of men before it spoke articu- 
lately aloud in the incarnation. 



April 9.] PHARAOH, BALAAM, ELI, SAUL. 93 

Moses was mentally great, morally good ; 
but, besides, Moses was religious. This is 
shown in his reverence, ... in his obedience, 
... in his meekness. 

The character of David is a life of eminent 
saintliness, but you cannot mistake the Jew. 
There is Jewish exclusiveness, Jewish faults, 
Jewish narrowness. David is scarcely a per- 
sonage, so entirely does he pass in Jewish 
forms of thought into an ideal sovereign — 
*^the sure mercies of David." 

Isaiah went somewhat minutely into the 
expenditures of the Jewish ladies on their 
pretty persons while the cause of the widow 
and fatherless were uncared for ; but- they 
laughed at him until he became importunate, 
and then poor Isaiah was sawn in two and he 
bothered them no longer about their "chains '* 
and their " bracelets," their " glasses," the 
"fine linens," the "hoods," and the "veils.'* 

9. 

PHARAOH, BALAAM, ELL SAUL. 
And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he 
harkened not unto them. — Exod. ix, 12. 

WE find it written that God hardened 
Pharaoh*s heart. It is the greatest evil 
and worst penalty of doing wrong, that at 



94 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April 9. 

last a man ceases to distinguish right from 
wrong. 

Balaam saw his duty clear at night, but the 
next day he looked again and saw the glitter- 
ing bribe. He could not be sure ; at last he 
thought God's voice said, Go. No bribe on 
earth could induce Balaam to say a falsehood. 
. . . And yet with all this there is utter truth- 
lessness of heart. . . . He will only speak the 
thing he feels, but he is not careful to feel all 
that is true. He goes to another place where 
the whole truth wall not force itself upon his 
mind. . . . There is many a dishonorable 
thing done in business, or at an election, and 
the principal takes care not to inquire. 

Samuel alone, in all Israel, crossed Eli's 
path. And yet he stood the test. He was 
unswervingly just. He threw no petty hin- 
drances in his way. . . . Free from envy, free 
from priest-craft, earnest, humble, submissive 
— that is the bright side of Eli's character. 
There is another side to Eli's character. 
He was a wavering, feeble, powerless man, 
with excellent intentions, but an utter want of 
wilL 

Saul, the first King of Israel, w^hose earlier 
career was so bright and glorious, , , , Defeat 



April TO.] MARY, JOHN, JAMES, PETER. 95 

and misfortune gradually soured his temper, 
and made him bitter and cruel. Jealousy 
passed into disobedience, and insanity into 
suicide. 

lO. 

MARY, JOHN, JAMES, PETER. 

There was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disci- 
ples, whom Jesus loved. — John xiii, 23. 

MARTHA found her life in the outer world 
of fact ; Mary, in the inner world of feel- 
ing. Martha expressed herself outwardly in 
word, in action, in small acts of attention ; she 
loved to discuss. . . . Mary did not express 
— felt herself inexpressible ; reached truth by 
the heart, not by the mind. 

Why was John the most -beloved ? John 
was lovable. Not talent, as in Paul's case, 
nor eloquence, nor amiability drew Christ's 
spirit to him, but that large heart, which en- 
abled him to believe because he felt, and 
hence to reveal that "God is love." . . . He 
is most dear to the heart of Christ, who loves 
most, because he has most of God in him. 

It was the office of James to assert the 
necessity of moral rectitude. ... If you read 
through his whole epistle, you will find it is, 
from first to last, one continued vindication of 



96 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April ii. 

the first principles of morality against the 
semblances of religion. It is well known that 
Luther complained of this epistle that it did 
not contain the Gospel. , . . The Gospel ! 
how can we speak of the Gospel, when the 
first principles of morality are forgotten? 
when Christians are excusing themselves, and 
slandering one another ? How can the super- 
structure of love and faith be built, when the 
very foundations of human character — ^justice, 
mercy, truth — have not been laid? 

Peter was remarkable for personal courage. 
A soldier by nature, frank, free, generous, 
irascible. In his writings, accordingly, we 
find a great deal said about martyrdom. 

1 1. 

JUDAS. PILATE. 

And being let go, they went to their own company. 
— Acts iv, 23. 

T AM said to have *^ apologized for Judas." 
* My "apology" for Judas consisted in 
saying that his sin was not murder, but un- 
belief, and that he was sincere in what he did ; 
also that his temptation was Satanic, and that 
he is in hell. I did not say Judas was sincere 
in his betrayal of Christ, nor in his steward- 



April 12.] PAUL. 97 

ship of the common purse — I did not say that 
he was a sincere man. I simply said he was 
sincere in his remorse. . . . The suicide of 
Judas was the act of a man sincere, even to 
agony, in his remorse. . . . But remorse is not 
penitence. 

" What is truth .'^ " . . . It was not a question 
put for the sake of information, for he went 
immediately out, and did not stay for infor- 
mation. It was not put for the sake of ridi- 
cule, for he went out to say, " I find no fault in 
him.'* Sarcasm there was perhaps, but it was 
that mournful, bitter sarcasm which hides in- 
ward unrest in sneering words. 

12. 

PAUL. 

I HAVE fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith. — 2 Tim. iv, 7. 

A HEART, a brain, and a soul of fire; all his 
life a suppressed volcano; his acts ** living 
things with hands and feet;" his words half 
battles. A man, consequently, of terrible inward 
conflicts; his soul a battlefield for heaven and 
hell. Read, for example, the seventh chapter 
of the Epistle to the Romans describing his 
struggle under the law. It was by faith that 
7 



98 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [April 13. 

Paul removed mountains of impossibilities; it 
was by love that he became like God. Paul was 
a man of keen intellect, and of soaring and as- 
piring thought which would endure no shackles 
on its freedom. And his writings are full of the 
two subjects we might have expected from this 
temperament. He speaks a great deal of intel- 
lectual gifts; very much of Christian liberty. 

13. 

THE PHYSICIAN. 
When Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that 
be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. — 
Matt, ix, 12. 

THE minister's work is spiritual, the physi- 
cian's temporal. But if the former neg- 
lected physical needs or the latter shrank 
from spiritual opportunities on the plea that 
the cure of bodies, not of souls, is his work, 
so far they refuse to imitate their Master. 

14. 

THE MINISTER'S FITNESS FOR WORK. 
If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these 
things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ. — 
I Tim. iv, 6. 

T THINK the strictness of self-examination 
^ for ministerial fitness is contained in that 
solemn, searching question of our Lord, thricQ 



April 15.] A MINISTER'S SUCCESS. ' 99 

repeated, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou 
me more than these ? " It is not a minister's 
wisdom, but his convic Hon ^v^hich imparts itself 
to others. Nothing gives life but life. Real 
flame alone kindles other flame. This was the 
power of the apostles. **We believe, and 
therefore speak." Firm faith in what they 
spoke, that was the basis of the apostles' 
strength ; but in us there is one thing wanting 
— we only half believe. 

15. 

A MINISTER'S SUCCESS. 

Who also hath made us able ministers of the new 
testament ; not of the letter, but of the spirit ; for the let- 
ter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. — 2 Cor. iii, 6. 

WHAT is ministerial success ? Crowded 
churches — full aisles — attentive congre- 
gations — approval of the religious world — 
much impression produced.'* Elijah thought 
so, and when he found out his mistake, and 
discovered that the applause on Carmel sub- 
sided into hideous stillness, his heart well-nigh 
broke with disappointment. Ministerial suc- 
cess lies in altered lives and obedient, humble 
hearts ; unseen work recognized in the judg- 
ment day. 



too THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April i6. 

Paul details the circumstances of his own rare 
ministry, and he asks in return not the affection 
of the Corinthians, nor their admiration, but 
this : that they ** receive not the grace of God 



in vain." 



16. 

THE FATE OF A SERMON. 

He that received seed into the good ground is he 
that heareth the word, and understandeth it ; which also 
beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some a hundredfold, 
some sixty, some thirty. — Matt, xiii, 23. 

SCARCELY has its [a sermon's] last tone 
vibrated on the ear, when a fresh im- 
pression is given by the music which dismisses 
the congregation. That is succeeded by 
another impression, as your friend puts his 
arm in yours and talks of some other matter, 
irrelevant, obliterating any slight seriousness 
which the sermon produced. Another, and 
another, and another— and the word is trod- 
den down. 

Again, it can be left to itself safely. It will 
grow. Ministers need not torment themselves 
about the issue of their work, for God gives 
the increase. It can be left, for it is God in 
the soul. When once the farmer has sown, 
he can do little more except weed. 



April i8.] PREACHING CHRIST, 101 

17. 

VAIN PREACHING. 

If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer 
loss: but he himself shall be saved ; yet so as by fire. — 
I Cor. iii, 15. 

MANY a minister, who prides himself on the 
number of his listeners, will be stripped 
of his vainglory, if the characters which he has 
produced be found wanting, if that which seems 
to be souls won for Christ turns out to be 
only hearts won for self. . . . Sincerity does 
not verify doctrines, but it saves the man. 
** Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord," 
says Paul, "we persuade men." Striking 
words ! Not " we terrify," not *^we threaten," 
but ** we persuade." 

18. 

PREACHING CHRIST. 

For I determined not to know anything among you, 
save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. — i Cor. ii, 2. 

T F I say that Newton is taught in our uni- 
^ versities, I mean his doctrines are laught ; 
and to preach Christ crucified is to preach 
his doctrines. . . . Preaching Christ implies 
preaching truth in connection with a person; 
X is not merely purity, but the pure One ; not 



102 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April. 19. 

merely goodness, but the good One, that we 
worship. . . . Lastly, to preach Christ is to 
preach the doctrine of surrender to the will of 
God. 

Paul's work at Athens was a failure. . . . 
There was no church at Athens. He came to 
Corinth and preached no longer to the wise, 
the learned, or the rich. . . . Paul no longer 
confronted the philosopher on his own ground. 
. . . Not the crucifixion of Christ, but Christ 
and Christ crucified. Christ his own evidence. 
We know the result : the church of Corinth, 
the largest and noblest harvest ever given to 
ministerial toil. 

19. 

TIME. 

And the angel . . . lifted up his hand to heaven, and 
sware by him that liveth forever and ever, who created 
heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, 
and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the 
things which are therein, that there should be time no 
longer. — -Rev. x, 5, 6. 

WHEN God created the sun and moon 
and stars to serve for *' signs and for 
seasons, and for days and years," he was act- 
ually, so far as man was concerned, creating 
time. Our minds would be only floating in 



April 20.] THE BACKWARD LOOK. 103 

an eternal Now, if it were not for symbolical 
successions which represent the processes of 
thought. The clock in the house is almost a 
fresh creation. The gliding heavens, and the 
seasons, and the ticking clock — what is time 
to us without them ? Nothing. 

20. 

THE BACKWARD LOOK. * 

Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, or athirst, or 
a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not 
minister unto thee ? Then shall he answer them, saying, 
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one 
of the least of these, ye did it not to me. — Matt, xxv, 

44. 45. 

YESTERDAY was such a day as never was 
before, and never can be again. Out of 
darkness and eternity it was born, a new, fresh 
day ; into darkness and eternity it sank again 
forever. It had a voice calling to us, of its 
own. Its own work — its own duties. What 
were we doing yesterday ? 

Take yesterday as a specimen of life. What 
was it with most of us .'^ A day of sin. Was 
it sin palpable and dark, such as we shall re- 
member painfully this day year ? Nay, my 
brethren, unkindness, petulance, wasted time, 



104 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April 21. 

opportunities lost, frivolous conversation, that 
was our chief guilt. And yet with all that, 
trifling *as it may be, when it comes to be the 
history of life does it not leave behind a rest- 
less sense of fault, a vague idea of debt? 

21. 

THE FORWARD LOOK. 

This one thing I do, forgetting those things which 
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which 
are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the 
high calling of God in Christ Jesus. — Phil, iii, 13, 14. 

TIME past is a dream, time to come seems 
immense ; the longest night, which seemed 
as if it would never drag through, is but a 
speck of memory v/hen it is gone. 

Look forward but ten years, and plan for it, 
live for it ; there is something of manhood, 
something of courage, required to conquer the 
thousand little things that stand in your way. 
And therefore it is, that faith, and nothing 
but faith, gives victory in death. We are 
conquerors of death when we are able to look 
beyond it. 

The habit of looking forward to the future 
prevents all pride and self-righteousness, and 
makes our best and only rest and satisfaction 



April 24.] 



SOCIETY. 105 



to consist in contemplating the future which 
is bringing us nearer and nearer home. 



OUR RACE. 
He hath done all things well. — Mark vii, 37. 

THE only question we ask is this, whether 
God is guiding the race or not. If he 
guides it, then it is on its way to good and not 

to evil. 

23. 

LANGUAGE. 

Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. — i Cor. 
xiii, 8. 

THE expert linguist is generally found more 
proud of his gifts, and more vain, than 
the deep thinker and knower. And yet sup- 
pose a man had known fifty languages in the 
days of Paul, how many — or rather how few — 
would be of use now "^ 

24. 

SOCIETY. 

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities 
of the weak, and not to please ourselves. — Rom. xv, I. 

THE advent of better times for the working 
classes depends on their own personal 
reformation, chastity, sobriety, and self-con- 



106 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April 25. 

trol. . . . The law of life is this : no man can 
be good or great or happy except through in- 
ward efforts of his own, sustained by faith and 
strengthened by the grace of God. 

25. 

SOCIALISM. 

Other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which 
is Jesus Christ. — i Cor. iii, 1 1. 

SOCIALISM proceeds on the principle that 
all moral and even physical evil arises 
from unjust laws. If the cause be remedied, 
the effect will be good. But Christianity 
throws aside all that as merely chimerical. It 
proves that the fault is not in outward cir- 
cumstances, but in ourselves. Christianity 
leaves all outward circumstances to amelior- 
ate themselves, fastens its attention on the 
spirit which has to deal with them. Christ 
has declared that the kingdom of heaven is 
from within. 

The world has no remedy for its miseries 
but the cure of its selfishness. The coming 
revelation can only be a development of the 
last, as Christianity was of Judaism. There 
can be no new revelation. 



April 27.] THE EVIL OF PARTY SPIRIT, 107 

26. 

MOB FORCE. 
They cried out, Away with him, away with him, 
crucify him. — John xix, 15. 

THE enmity of the upper classes is im- 
potent ; but when that cry of brute force 
is stirred from the deeps of society, as deaf to 
the voice of reason as the ocean in its strength 
churned into raving foam by the winds, the 
heart of mere earthly oak quails before that. 

Never yet did a nation perish from without, 
but by a decay from within. The moral ruin 
preceded the violent outward one. 

27. 
THE EVIL OF PARTY SPIRIT. 
A NEW commandment I give unto you. That ye love 
one another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
another. — John xiii, 34. 

IVTOTHING more certainly eats out the 
I- ^ heart and life of religion than party 
spirit. Christianity is love ; party spirit is the 
death of love. Christianity is union amid 
variety of views ; party spirit is disunion. . . . 
Accuracy of view is worth little in comparison 
with warmth of heart. It is easy to love such 
as agree with us. Let us learn to love those 
who differ from us. 



108 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [April 28. 

28. 

LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENCE. 

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the 
Lord's sake. — i Peter ii, 13. . ' % 

LIBERTY is one thing, independence anoth- 
er ; a man is free, politically, whose right- 
ful energies are not cramped by the selfish, 
unjust claims of another. A man is inde- 
pendent, politically, when he is free from every 
tie that binds man to man. One is national 
blessedness, the other is national anarchy. 
Liberty makes you loyal to the grand law, " I 
ought ; " independence puts you in a position 
to obey the evil law, *^ I will." Every Chris- 
tian ought to be a free man, but no Christian 
is or ought to be independent. 

People talk of liberty as if it meant the 
liberty of doing what a man likes. The only 
liberty that a man worthy the name of a man 
ought to ask for, is to have all restrictions, in- 
ward and outward, removed which prevent 
his doing what he ought. 



April 30.] IDOLA TR Y. 109 

29. 

SUPERSTITION. 

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars* hill, and said. 
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are 
too superstitious. — Acts xvii, 22, 

THIS I believe is the very essence of super- 
stition — to feel great reverence for certain 
objects, visible or invisible, on account of 
some mysterious influence which all the while 
has not necessarily any moral effect, or any 
connection with character. Superstition has 
no religious element in it at all. It is all 
cowardice. 

30. 

IDOLATRY. 

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. — i John 
V, 21. 

IDOLATRY is the worship of anything as 
^ the Highest which is not the highest — the 
admission of any conception of God which is 
either false or else unnecessarily inadequate. 



CQftY. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



MAY. 

Atheism i 

Worldliness 2 

Morality 3 

The Opinion of Others 4 

Maxims and Principles 5 

Riches 6 

Fashionable Society 7 

Extravagance 8 

Taste 9 

Art 10 

Sculpture 11 

Beauty Should Elevate 12 

Good Books 13 

Read Few Books 14 

To Read With Profit 15 

Happiness and Blessedness 16 

The Cost of Pleasure 17 

The Capacity of Enjoyment 18 

God's Pleasures 19 

Amusements 20 

Sowing and Reaping 21 

Sin 22 

Transgression 23 

A Personal Devil 24 

Tempted of the Devil 25 

Origin of Evil 26 

The Fall of Man 27 

Predestination 28 

The First Time You Sinned 29 

Leaven 30 

One Fault Leads unto Another 31 



May I.] ATHEISM, 113 

1. 

ATHEISM. 

The wicked . . . will not seek after God : God is 
not in all his thoughts. — Psalm x, 4. 

IF you wish to know what hollowness and 
heartlessness are, you must seek for them 
in the world of light, elegant, superficial 
fashion — where frivolity has turned the heart 
into a rock bed of selfishness. Say what you 
will of the heartlessness of trade, it is nothing 
compared with the heartlessness of fashion. 
Say what they will of the atheism of science, 
it is nothing to the atheism of that round of 
pleasure in which many a heart lives — dead 
while it lives. 

2. 

WORLDLINESS. 

Looking diHgently lest any man fail of the grace of 
God ; lest any root t)f bitterness springing up trouble 
you, ... as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his 
birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he 
would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. — 
Heb. xii, 15, 16, 17. 

WORLDLINESS is the attractive power 
of something present, in opposition to 
something to come. In this respect worldli- 
ness is the spirit of childhood carried into 
8 



114 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May 3. 

manhood. The child lives in the present hour 

— to-day to him is everything. The holiday 

promised at a distant interval is no holiday at 

all — it must be either now or never. Natural in 

the child, and therefore pardonable, this spirit, 

when carried on into manhood, is coarse — is 

worldliness. 

3. 

MORALITY. 
Except your righteousness shall exceed the right- 
eousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. — Matt, v, 20. 

MORALITY requires that an act be done 
on principle. Religion goes deeper, 
and inquires into the state of the heart. In 
morals we only believe so far as we are. 

When man comes to front the everlasting 
God, and look the splendor of his judgments 
in the face, personal integrity, the dream of 
spotlessness and innocence vanish into thin 

air. 

4. 

THE OPINION OF OTHERS. 
If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother 
to offend. — I Cor. viii, 13. 

WE cannot live in this world indifferent to 
appearances. Year by year we are more 
and more taught this truth. It is irksome, no 



May 6.] RICHES. 115 

doubt, to be under restraint; to have to ask not 
only, ''Does God permit this?" but, ''Will it not 
be misconstrued by others?" and to a free, open, 
fiery spirit, such as the apostle of the Gentiles, 
doubly irksome and almost intolerable. Never- 
theless, it was to him a most solemn consider- 
ation. 

6, 

MAXIMS AND PRINCIPLES. 
And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious 
words which proceeded out of his mouth. — Luke iv, 22. 

A MAN who is governed, not by principles, 
but by maxims and rules, is a pedant or a 
slave; he will never be able to depart from the 
letter of the rule, not even to preserve the spirit 
of it. Here is the difference between the law 
and the Gospel. The law lays down rules — "Do 
this and live." The Gospel lays down princi- 
ples. Thus Judaism said, "Forgive seven 
times;" Christianity said, '* Forgiveness is a 

boundless spirit." 

6. 

RICHES. 
What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul ? — Mark viii, 36, 

CHRIST said, "How hardly shall they 
that trust in riches enter into the king- 
dom of heaven." He does not say the divided 



116 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May 7. 

heart has no religion, but that it is a dwarfed, 
stunted, feeble religion. Many such a Chris- 
tian do you find among the rich and the 
titled, who as a less encumbered man might 
have been a resolute soldier of the cross ; but 
he is only now a realization of the old pagan 
fable — a spiritual giant buried under a moun- 
tain of gold. 

7. 

FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. 

They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with 
the affections and lusts. — Gal. v, 24. 

THEY who know the world of fashion tell 
us that the tone adopted there is either to 
be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be 
proof against surprises, to have lost all keenness 
of enjoyment, and to have all keenness of won- 
der gone. That which ought to be man's shame 
becomes their boast — unsusceptibility of any 

fresh emotion. 

8. 

EXTRAVAGANCE. 

If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unright- 
eous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true 
riches? — Luke xvi, ii. 

T WASTED my time in trying to explain to 
■■• her that expenditure is not production; that 
;^5o,ooo a year spent is not ^50,000 worth of 



May 9.] TASTE. 11 



ry 



commodities produced, and added nothing to 
the real wealth of the country. I tried to show 
her that twenty servants are not supported by 
their master, but by the laborers who raise 
their corn and make their clothes. Employ- 
ment does not create anything. Men engaged 
in carrying dishes or in making useless roads 
are employed no doubt. ... It may make a fairer 
distribution of the wealth in the country, but 
does not go one step toward altering the real 
burden of the country,or producing new wealth. 
Extravagant expenditure impoverishes the 

country. 

9. 

TASTE. 
CoNsmER the lilies of the field, how they grow ; 
they toil not, neither do they spin : and yet I say unto 
you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these. — Matt, vi, 28, 29. 

TASTE IS perception of beauty; to have 
taste is to recognize that which is right 
and congruous. When we speak of the moral 
sense, we mean the power of distinguishing 
between right and wrong ; when we speak of 
taste, we mean the faculty of distinguishing 
that which is fitting from that which is unbe- 
coming. . . . What is it that prevents sympathy 
between class and class .'^ Not merely differ- 



118 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May to. 

ence of opinion, but difference of taste. The 
difference in feeling between educated and un- 
educated men places a great gulf between them. 
Enlarge your tastes, that you may enlarge 
your hearts as well as your pleasures ; feel all 
that is beautiful, love all that is good. 

lO. 

ART. 

He removed the high places, and brake the images, 
and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen 
serpent that Moses had made : for unto those days the 
children of Israel did burn incense to it. — 2 Kings 
xviii, 4. 

T AM very anxious to humanize and polish 
^ the people ; but I cannot shut my eyes to 
the lesson of history, that the arts, such as 
painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have not in 
themselves ennobled, but often deteriorated 
nations. The worship of the beautiful is not 
the worship of holiness; and therefore to talk 
of statue galleries and museums as if they 
were to do the work which can only be done 
by the cross of Christ, and to represent such 
aesthetic amusements as the true and right 
religious use of rest, I hold is mere false senti- 
mentality. 



May II.] 



SCULPTURE. 



119 



11. 

SCULPTURE. 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, 
or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or 
tliat is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water 
under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to 
them, nor serve them. — Exod. xx, 4, 5. 

For this ye know, that no . . . covetous man, who is 
an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of 
Christ and of God. — Eph. v, 5. 

ONE thing that has made me reflect much 
has been the effect produced by sculp- 
ture on the Greeks. Those sublime works, of 
which fragments are to us like inspiration, 
were by the judgment of heathens themselves 
productive of a corruption of feelings and 
morals that is scarcely credible. I thank God 
that we have not the treasures of Italy or the 
Continent. . . . And it is very singular to 
find how all the nobler heathen condemned 
the stage and the dance and the poetry which 
answers to our romance — such men as Plu- 
tarch, Cato, Socrates, etc. One very impas- 
sioned passage in Plato I remember struck me 
when a boy, where he banishes all such things 
from his ideal republic. 



130 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May 12. 

12. 

BEAUTY SHOULD ELEVATE. 

Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us : 
and establish thou the work of our hands upon us ; yea, 
the work of our hands establish thou it. — Psalm xc, 17. 

THE true objective of that sense is moral 
beauty. . . . No man knows the highest 
goodness who does not feel beauty. The 
beauty of holiness is its highest aspect. To 
act right because it is beautiful, and because 
noble, true, self-denying, pure acts commend 
themselves to a soul attuned to harmony, is the 
highest kind of goodness. "To see the King 
in his beauty "is the loftiest and most unearthly 
attainment. 

13. 
GOOD BOOKS. 

From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, 
which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through 
faith which is in Christ Jesus. — 2 Tim. iii, 15. 

T PERCEIVE more than ever the necessity 
^ of devotional reading. I mean the works 
of eminently holy persons, whose tone was not 
merely uprightness of character and high- 
mindedness, but communion — a strong sense 
of personal and everliving communion — with 
God besides. 



May 15.] TO READ WITH PROFIT, 121 

14. 

READ FEW BOOKS. 

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy 
mouth ; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, 
that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is 
written therein. — Josh, i, 8. 

GIRLS read too much and think too little. 
1 will answer for it that there are few 
girls of eighteen who have not read more 
books than I have ; and as to religious books 
I could count upon my fingers in two minutes 
ail I ever read — but they are mine. . . . Mul- 
tifarious reading weakens the mind more than 
doing nothing ; it is an excuse for the mind to 
lie dormant, while thought is poured in and 
runs through a clear stream, over unproduct- 
ive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. 

15. 

TO READ WITH PROFIT. 

Philip ran thither to him. and heard him read the 
prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou 
readest ? And he said, How can I, except some man 
should guide me? — Acts viii, 30, 31. 

TT is very surprising to find how little we 
* retain of a book. . . . Books read once 
have passed as completely from us as if we 



122 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May i6. 

had never read theai ; whereas the discipline 
of mind got by writing down, not copying, an 
abstract of a book which is worth the trouble, 
fixes it on the mind for years ; and, besides, 
enables one to read other books with more 
attention and more profit. 

16. 

HAPPINESS AND BLESSEDNESS. 

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel 
of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor 
sitteth in the seat of the scornful. — Psalm i, i. 

HE drew the distinction sharply between 
happiness and blessedness — the two 
things are opposite although not necessarily 
contrary. He told them, " Blessed are the 
meek ! Blessed are the poor in spirit ! " The 
mourning man, and the poor man, and the 
persecuted man — these were not happy, if 
happiness consists in the gratification of all 
our desires, but they were blessed beyond all 
earthly blessedness; for . . . blessedness is the 
satisfaction of those aspirations which have 
God alone for their end and aim. 



May i8.] THE CAPACITY OF ENJOYMENT, \T6 



17. 

THE COST OF PLEASURE. 

And he said, I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much 
goods laid up for many yeai's; take thine ease, eat, drink, 
and be merry. But God said unto him. Thou fool, this 
night thy soul shall be required of thee. — Luke xii, 19, 20. 

BEFORE you covet the enjoyment which 
another possesses you must first calculate 
the cost at which it was procured. 

In the life of pleasure we lead the life of 
excitement, and thus it soon follows that 
emotions will not rise at the call and bidding 
of excitement ; the history being inevitably 
this : first sensibility of feeling, then excite- 
ment, then callousness, then apathy, and lastly 

hardness. 

18. 

THE CAPACITY OF ENJOYMENT. 
As it is written, He that had gathered much had 
nothing over ; and he that had gathered little had no 
lack. — 2 Cor. viii, 15. 

GOD has given to every man a certain capac- 
ity and a certain power of enjoyment. 
Beyond that he cannot find delight. Whatso- 
ever he heaps or hoards beyond that is not 
enjoyment, but disquiet. 

Every man must go out of himself for enjoy- 
ment. There is that within us which compels 



124 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May 19. 

US to attach ourselves to something outward. 

The choice is not this : love or be without 

love. You cannot give the pent up steam its 

choice of moving or not moving. It must 

move one way or the other, the right way or 

the wrong way. Direct it rightly, and its 

energy rolls the engine wheels smoothly on 

their track ; block up its passage, and it bounds 

away a thing of madness and ruin. Stop it 

you cannot ; it will rather burst. So it is with 

our hearts. 

19. 

GOD'S PLEASURES. 
He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. — Matt, v, 
45. 

ALL God's pleasures are simple ones; 
health, the rapture of a May morning, 
sunshine, the stream blue and green, kind 
words, benevolent acts, the glow of good 

humor. 

20. 

AMUSEMENTS. 
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father 
is not in him. — i John ii, 15. 

IF the enjoyments which you permit your- 
selves are such that the thought of passing 
Time and coming Eternity presents itself as an 



May 21.] SOWING AND REAPING. 125 

intrusive thought, which has no business there, 
which is out of place and incongruous ; if 
there is left behind a craving for excitement 
which can only be slacked by more and more 
intense excitement ; then it is at your own 
peril that you say, ^*A11 is left open to me, and 
permitted." Unworldly you ;//^i-/ become — or 
die. Dare not to say, *^ This is only a matter 
of opinion ; *' it is not a matter of opinion. . . . 
Remember, that worldliness is a more decisive 
test of a man's spiritual state than even sin. 
Sin may be sudden, the result of temptation, 
without premeditation, yet afterward hated — 
repented of — repudiated — forsaken. But if a 
man be at home in the world's pleasures and 
pursuits, contented ... if they could but last 
forever, is not his state, genealogy, and char- 
acter clearly stamped "^ 

21. 

SOWING AND REAPING. 

Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for whatsoever 
a man soweth that shall he also reap. — Gal. vi, 7. 

THE "flesh " includes all the desires of our 
unrenewed nature — the harmless as well 
as the sinful. Any labor, therefore, which is 
bounded by present well-being is sowi?ig to the 



126 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May 22. 

flesh. . . . This is the mistake men make. 

They expect both harvests, paying only one 

price. They would be blessed with goodness 

and prosperity at once. They would have that 

on which they bestowed no labor. ... If you 

sow the wind, do not complain if your harvest 

is the whirlwind. If you sow to the Spirit, be 

content with a spiritual reward — -invisible, 

within. 

22. 

SIN.' 
Be ye angry, and sin not. — Eph. iv, 26. 

IN every act of sin there are two distinct 
'*■ steps : There is the rising of a desire which 
is natural, and being natural, is not wrong; 
there is the indulgence of that desire in for- 
bidden circumstances, and that is sin. . . . 
Resentment is but the sense of injustice made 
more vivid by its being brought home to our- 
selves ; resentment is beyond our control, so 
far. There is no sin in this : but let resent- 
ment rest there ; let it pass into, not justice, 
but revenge ; let it smolder in vindictive 
feeling till it becomes retaliation, and then a 
natural feeling has grown into a transgression. 
Guilt is contracted by the soul in so far as it 
sins against and transgresses the law of God, 



May 24. J A PERSONAL DEVIL, 127 

by doing that which it believed to be wrong ; 
not so much what is wrong as what appears to 
// to be wrong. This is the doctrine distinctly 
laid down in the seventh and eighth verses of 
First Corinthians, eighth chapter. 

23. 

TRANSGRESSION. 
Sin is the transgression of the law. — i John iii, 4. 

EVERY sin is a transgression of the law, 
but every transgression of the law is not 
necessarily a sin. ... It is possible for a man 
to transgress the law of God not knowingly, 
and in inspired language we are told that '* sin 
is not imputed unto him." . . . There must 
be some voluntary act, transgressing some 
known law, or there is no sin. 

24. 

A PERSONAL DEVIL. 

Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: 
for it is written, Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, 
and him only shalt thou serve. — Matt, iv, 10. 

OUR salvation does not depend upon our 
having right notions about the devil, but 
right feelings about God. If you hate evil, you 
are on God's side, whether there be a personal 



128 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [May 25. 

evil principle or not. I myself believe there 
is, but not so unquestionably as to be able to 
say I think it a matter of clear revelation. The 
Bible does reveal God, and except with a belief 
in God there can be no goodness. But I can 
conceive intense hatred of wrong with great 
uncertainty whether there be a personal devil 
or not. Indeed many persons who believe in 
a devil are worse instead of better for their 
belief, since they throw the responsibility of 
their acts off themselves on him. Do not tor- 
ment yourself with such questions. The sim- 
pler ones are the deepest. 

25. 

TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL. 

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath 
desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : but 
I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. — Luke 
xxii, 31, 32. 

\1 7HAT is it to renounce the devil? His 
^^ works are sins of our higher nature, 
spiritual offenses — such as envy, pride, anger, 
malice. The solitary sins are those of the 
flesh and of the devil. . . . We are most 
ashamed of our meaner sensual sins — glut- 
tony, etc. When we yield to them we sink 



May 26.] ORIGIN OF EVIL. 129 

to a level with the brute, but when we yield 
to the sins of our higher nature we are then 
on our way to become devils, 

26. 

ORIGIN OF EVIL. 

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted 

of God : for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither 

tempteth he any man : but every man is tempted, when 

he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. — James 

i, 13, 14. 

''/^^OD can do anything?" I know not 
^^ that. God cannot deny himself; God 
cannot do wrong; God cannot create a num- 
ber less than one ; God cannot make a con- 
tradiction true. It is a contradiction to let 
man be free, and force him to do right. . . . 
Without free will there could be no human 
goodness. It is wise, therefore, and good in 
God, to give birth to free will. But once ac- 
knowledge free will in man, and the origin of 
evil does not lie in God. ... In our own free 
will — in the grand and fearful power we have 
to ruin ourselves — lies the real and only relig- 
ious solution of the mystery. In the soil of 
the heart is found all the nutriment of spiritual 
life, and all the nutriment of the weeds and 
poisons which destroy spiritual life. 
9 



130 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [May 27. 

27. 

THE FALL OF MAN. 

Since by man came death, by man came also the 
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even 
so in Christ shall all be made alive. — i Cor. xv, 21, 22. 

WHEN man fell, the world fell with him. 
All creation received a shock. Thorns, 
briers, and thistles, sprang up. They were 
there before, but to the now restless and im- 
patient hands of men they became obstacles 
and weeds. Death, which must ever have 
existed as a form of dissolution, a passing from 
one state to another, became a curse ; the sting 
of death was sin — unchanged in itself, it 
changed in man. 

28. 
PREDESTINATION. 

Whom he did predestinate, them he also called : and 
whom he called, them he also justified : and whom he 
justified, them he also glorified. — Rom. viii, 30. 

ALL high truth is the union of two contra- 
dictories. Thus predestination and free 
will are opposites : and the truth does not lie 
between these two, but in a higher reconciling 
truth which leaves both true. 

Paul does not mean to assert the doctrine 
of an arbitrary election or predestination; on 



May 30.] LEA VEN. 131 

the contrary, he says that this calling was in 
respect of inward fitness, '^ believing," and not 
of outward advantages. " Not many wise men 
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many 
noble, are called." God prepares the heart of 
man for the reception of the Gospel — that is 
God's blessed plan of election. 

29. 

THE FIRST TIME YOU SINNED. 
My sin is ever before me. — Psalm li, 3. 

LET anyone, out of a series of transgressions, 
compare the character of the first and the 
last. The first time there was the shudder and 
the horror, and the violent struggle and the 
feeling of impossibility. I cannot — cannot do 
this. The second time there was faint reluct- 
ance, . . . and the last time there is neither 
shudder nor reluctance, but the eager plunge 
down the precipice on the brink of which he 

trembled once. 

30. 

LEAVEN. 
Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole 
lump. — I Cor. V, 6. 

SIN committed with impunity corrupts the 
body of men to which the sinner be- 
longs. 



132 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [May 31. 

31. 

ONE FAULT LEADS UNTO ANOTHER. 

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but 
because he was a thief. — ^John xii, 6. 

THE worst misfortune that can happen is 
to sin and to escape detection; shame 
and sorrow do God's work, as nothing else 
can do it, ... A sin undetected is the soil 
out of which fresh sin will grow. 



(3UNB. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



JUNE. 

Backsliding I 

Can We Fall From Grace ? 2 

Idleness 3 

Sins of Thought , 4 

Unbelief. 5 

Contented to Doubt 6 

The Sin of Sins 7 

Infidelity 8 

Our Lips 9 

The Evil of Slander 10 

The Remedy for Slander 1 1 

The Unpardonable Sin 12 

Passion Never Reasons 13 

Sarcasm 14 

Our Judgment 15 

Judging 16 

Praise 17 

Pride 18 

Vanity ig 

Boasting 20 

Hypocrisy 21 

Insincerity 22 

Hatred 23 

Wickedness 24 

Curses 25 

Agony of Sin 26 

The Soul Degraded 27 

A Hardened Heart 28 

The Deepest Curse of Sin 29 

The Strength of Sin 30 



June I.J BACKSLIDING, 135 

1. 
BACKSLIDING. 
Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
fall. — I Cor. X, 12. 

KNOW we not how awfully true that Sen- 
tence is, ** Sin revived, and I died } " 
The vivid life of sin is the death of the man. 
Have we never felt that our true existence has 
absolutely in that moment disappeared, and 
that we are not .^ 

2. 

CAN WE FALL FROM GRACE? 

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh 
away : and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth 
it, that it may bring forth more fruit. — John xv, 2. 

BY grace some meant the Spirit of God, and 
they [Corinthians] held that the soul which 
had once become one with God is his forever. 
Undoubtedly this has the sanction of Scripture. 
For example, "Fear not, little flock; for it is 
your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
kingdom." "I give unto them eternal life; 
and they shall never perish, neither shall any 
man pluck them out of my hand.*' We cannot 
read these passages without perceiving that 
there is an inner circle of men in the kingdom 
of grace in whom God's Spirit dwells, who are 



136 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June 3. 

one with God, in whom his Holy Spirit is a well 
of water springing up into everlasting life. On 
the other hand, by ^r<2^^some meant that state in 
which all Christians are — as redeemed from the 
world by Christ's blood, called to be saints, and 
to whom the high privileges of God's Church 
are revealed. Unquestionably not all who are 
recipients of that grace and redeemed into that 
mercy will be saved. Remember the parable of 
the fig tree in the vineyard, which was unfruit- 
ful, and was sentenced. Again such exhorta- 
tions as ''Quench not the Spirit," implies that 
he may be quenched. These passages prove at 
least that there are also those who have professed 
religion with warmth — nay, who in Christ's name 
have done many wonderful works — and yet to 
whom he shall declare at the last, ''I never knew 
you." So near may we approach to the king- 
dom of God, and yet come short of attaining it. 

3. 

IDLENESS. 

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men 
shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of 
judgment. — Matt, xii, 36. 

WOE and trial to the spirit that has noth- 
ing for the hands to do ! Misery to 
him or her who emancipates himself or herself 



June 4.] S/A^S OF THOUGHT. 137 



from tlie universal law, "In the sweat of thy 
brow shalt thou eat bread.'* Evil thoughts, 
despondency, sensual feeling, sin in every 
shape is before him, to beset and madden, often 
to ruin him. 

4. 

SINS OF THOUGHT. 

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of 
my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my 
strength, and my redeemer. — Psalm xix, 14. 

THERE is the parable of the son who 
said to his father, "I go not," and after- 
ward went. The resolve of disobedience was 
made. Do we fancy that it was not in any 
way reversed or canceled by the change of 
purpose } The comment of Christ is that he 
[the son] did the will of his father. There 
is no passage in which it is said that sin of 
thought is equal to the sin of act. It is 
simply said the sin of act may be done in 
thought, so far as thought goes. Whether it 
is equivalent to an act depends upon the 
question whether, opportunity and safety be- 
ing given, it is carried into action. Clearly 
only God knows whether it would have been 
carried into act. 



138 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [June 5. 

8. . 

UNBELIEF. 

Because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou 
standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear : for if 
God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he 
also spare not thee. — Rom. xi, 20, 21. 

THEY whose life is low and earthly, how 
can they believe in aught beyond the 
grave, when nothing of that life which is 
eternal has yet stirred within us? . . . He 
alone can believe in immortality who feels the 
resurrection in him already. 

6. 

CONTENTED TO DOUBT. 

This is the condemnation, that light is come into the 
world, and men love darkness rather than light, because 
their deeds were evil. — John iii, 19. 

COLD hearts are not anxious enough to 
doubt. Men who love will have their 
misgivings at times ; that is not the evil. But 
the evil is when men go on in that languid 
doubting way, contented to doubt, proud of 
their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about 
them, without the manliness to say, "I must 
and will know the truth." 



June 9.] OUR LIPS. 139 

7. 

THE SIN OF SINS. 
He that believetli not God hath made limi a liar. — 
I John V, lo. 

DISTRUST is the sin of sins, which makes 
sin sin. Luther said strongly, but not 
too strongly, " Nothing damns except unbe- 
lief." 

8. 

INFIDELITY. 
He that believe th on the Son hath everlasting life : 
and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but 
the wrath of God abideth on him. — John iii, 36. 

TN the darkest hour through which a human 
-■• soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, 
this at least is certain. If there be no God 
and no future state, yet even then it is better 
to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste 
than licentious, better to be true than false, 
better to be brave than a coward. 

OUR LIPS. 
Set a watch, Lord, before my mouth ; keep the 
door of my lips. — Psalm cxli, 3. 

THE value of self-command and self-denial 
is exemplified in the cases of the diplo- 
matist who masters his features while listen- 



140 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June lo. 

ing; the man of the world who keeps his tem- 
per and guards his lips. How often after speak- 
ing hastily the thought which was uppermost, 
and feeling the cheek burn, you have looked 
back in admiration on some one who held his 
tongue even though under great provocation 

to speak. 

lO. 

THE EVIL OF SLANDER. 

Whoso privily slandereth his neigabor, him will I 
cut off. — Psalm ci, 5. 

THE first evil consequence of slander is 
the harm that a man does to himself; ^'so 
is the tongue among the members, that it defil- 
eth the whole body," ... it effects a dissipation 
of spiritual energy. There are two ways in 
which the steam of machinery may find an out- 
let for its force: it may work, and if so it works 
silently; or it may escape, and that takes place 
loudly, in air and noise. . . . The next feature is, 
you cannot stop the consequences of a slander. 
*'It sets on fire the whole course of nature." . . . 
The third element of guilt lies in the unnatural- 
ness of slander. *' Doth a fountain send forth 
at the same place sweet water and bitter?". . . 
The nature of man is to adore God and to love 
what is godlike in man. The office of the 



June 12.] THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 141 

tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty because 
It contradicts this. . . . The fourth point of 
guilt is the diabolical character of slander; 
the tongue "is set on fire of hell." 

1 1. 

THE REMEDY FOR SLANDER. 

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. 
— Rom. xii, 2i. 



/y /I AN," says the apostle James, '^was made 



in the image of God; " to slander man 
is to slander God: to love what is good in man 
is to love it in God. Love is the only remedy 
for slander ; no set of rules or restrictions can 
stop it ; we may denounce, but we shall de- 
nounce in vain. 

12. 

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 

He that despised Moses' law died without mercj 
under two or three witnesses : of how much sorer pun- 
ishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who 
hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath 
counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was 
sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto 
the Spirit of grace ? — Heb. x, 28,' 29. 

THE Pharisees beheld the works of Jesus. 
They could not deny that they w^ere 
good works, but rather than acknowledge 



142 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [June 12. 

that they were done by a good man through 
the cooperation of a divine Spirit, they said 
they were done by the power of Beelzebub, 
the prince of the devils. It was upon this 
occasion that our Redeemer said, " For a word 
spoken against the Holy Ghost there is no 
forgiveness in this world, or in the world to 
come." Our own hearts respond to the truth 
of this — to call evil good and good evil, to 
see the divinest good and call it satanic evil — 
below this lowest deep there is not a lower 
still. . . . Beware of that spirit which contro- 
versy fosters, of watching only for the evil 
in the character of an antagonist, ... of mag- 
nifying every speck of evil and closing the 
eye to goodness ! .* . . I say it in all serious- 
ness, adopting the language of the Bible and 
using it advisedly and with accurate mean- 
ing : the spirit which guides the press of this 
country, which dictates those personalities, 
which prevents controversialists from seeing 
what is good in their opponents, which attri- 
butes low motives to account for excellent 
lives, and teaches men whom to suspect and 
shun, rather than point out where it is pos- 
sible to admire and love, is a spirit *'$et on 
fire of hell." 



June 14.] SARCASM, 143 

13. 

PASSION NEVER REASONS. 

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty ; 
and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. 
— Prov. xvi, 32. 

ALL the passions deal not with the limita- 
tions of time and space, but belong to 
a world which is infinite. The strong pas- 
sions, whether good or bad, never calculate. 
Anger, for example, does not ask for satis- 
faction in gold and silver ; it feels and re- 
sents a wrong that is infinite. Love demands 
the eternal blessedness of the thing loved ; 
it feels, and delights to feel, that it is itself 
infinite and can never end. 

14. 

SARCASM. 

And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they 
put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand : and 
they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, say- 
ing, Hail, King of the Jews ! — Matt, xxvii, 29. 

THERE is a persecution sharper than that 
of the ax. Cruel sneers and sarcasms 
and pitiless judgments and cold-hearted cal- 
umnies — these are persecutions. There is 
the tyrant of the nursery and the playground 



144 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June 15. 

and the domestic circle, as well as of the 
judgment hall. Did you ever do that? Did 
you ever pour bitterness into a heart that 
God was bruising by a cold laugh or a sneer 
or a galling suspicion? 

15. 

OUR JUDGMENT. 

Ye judge after the flesh ; I judge no man. And yet 
if 1 judge, my judgment is true : for 1 am not alone, but 
I and the Father that sent me. — John viii, 15, 16. 

IN every department of life there is an organ 
^ for judging. In the world of sense, the 
empiric intellect. In the world of spirit 
another organ altogether is needed ; not the 
understanding, but the heart : " With the 
heart man believeth." Obedience is the or- 
gan by which you judge of things not seen or 
heard. One act of charity will teach you 
more of God than all the sages can. . . . The 
mightiest chemist knows nothing about im- 
mortality or about God. . . . Can you esti- 
mate music by mathematics ? . . . You must 
do the will of God before you can judge of 
the doctrine of God. He only can understand 
who resembles. 



June 17.] PRAISE. 145 

16. 

JUDGING. 
Why dost tliou judge thy brother ? or why dost thou 
set at naught thy brother? for we sliall all stand before 
the judgment seat of Christ. — Rom. xiv, 10. 

THE next time you are inclined to be flip- 
pant remember that Elijah's character 
alone can qualify for Elijah's judgment. 

The larger, the better, the nobler your heart 
is the more you will be inclined to make 
allowances for others, and the more you will 
feel and say, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 

Would you be secure alike when the world 
pours its censure or its applause upon you 1 
Feel hourly that God will judge. 

17. 

PRAISE. 
Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth ; 
a stranger, and not thine own lips. — Prov. xxvii, 2. 

\1 ZE think that we liate falsehood, . . . but we 
^ ' are half pleased with the false praise. . . . 
Now he is a man of intjgrity who hates untruth 
as untruth: who resents the smooth and pol- 
ished falsehood of society which does no harm. 
We despise the man we praise too much; 
our genuine reverence for him is gone, and a 
secret contempt takes its place. 
10 



146 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June i8. 

The worst acknowledgment that can be made 
of an instructive lecture is to clap. 

There is an enlarging ennobling power in 

admiration of others, and in making allowance 

for them. 

18. 

PRIDE. 

Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination 
to the Lord. — Prov. xvi, 5. 

"/^OVET earnestly the best gifts." Paul 
^^ did not sneer at eloquence, nor con- 
temn learning ; but he said, These are your 

responsibilities. You are a steward; you have 
received. Beware that you be found faith- 
ful. Woe unto you if accomplishments have 
been the bait for admiration, or if beauty 
has left the mind empty or has allured others 
to evil. Woe if the gifts and manner that 
have made you acceptable liave done no 

more. 

19. 

VANITY. 

How can ye believe, which receive honor one of 
another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God 
only? — John v, 44. 

THE vain man looks for the admiration of 
others — the proud man requires nothing 
but his own. Now it is this distinction which 



June 20.] BOASTING. 147 

makes vanity despicable to us all. ... So soon 
as we let men see that we are suppliants for 
their admiration, we are at their mercy. We 
have given them the privilege of feeling that 
they are above us. . . . But it is very different 
with pride. No man can look down on him 
that is proud, for he asks no man for anything. 
They are forced to feel respect for pride be- 
cause it is thoroughly independent of them. 
It scorns to care whether others take notice of 
them or not. It may be a more dazzling and 
a more splendid sin to be proud. It is no less 
hateful in God's sight. 

20. 

BOASTING. 

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified 
unto me, and I unto the world. — Gal. vi, 14. 

STRONG feelings often evaporate in words. 
Strong expressions about self-sacrifice or 
self-denial, about a life sustained high above 
the world, often satisfy the heart and prevent 
it from rising to the grace talked about. 



148 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June 21. 

21. 

HYPOCRISY. 

The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of 
the hypocrite but for a moment. — Job xx, 5. 

THE Pharisee was not a hypocrite in our 
sense — a willful deceiver. In the Bible 
sense, a hypocrite is a false character. . . . 
Be religious. Be not anxious to seem so. 

22. 

INSINCERITY. 

Thou shalt be sincere with the Lord thy God. — Deut. 
xviii, 13. 

THERE are faults more heinous, but none 
more ruinous, than insincerity. 

23. 

HATRED. 

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he 
is a liar : for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? — 
I John iv, 20. 

EVERY time I hate a good man for his 
meekness or his goodness, find bad mo- 
tives to account for the excellence of those who 
differ from me, judge sins of weakness more 



June 24.] WICKEDNESS. 149 

severely than sins of wickedness, I am a sharer 
in the spirit to which he fell a victim. 

Hold fast to love. If men wound your 
heart, let them not sour or embitter it. Be able 
always to say with Paul, ** My heart is en- 
larged." 

24. 

WICKEDNESS. 

Peter remembered the word of Jesus, who said unto 
him, Before the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice. 
And he went out and wept bitterly. — Matt, xxvi, 75. 

A WEAKNESS of the heart produces more 
misery, more both to self and others, and 
is more severely chastised, than a deliberate 
wickedness. . . . My only solution of the 
mystery is this : The hardening effects of sin, 
which save from pain, are worse judgments 
than the sharpest suffering. Anguish is, I am 
more and more sure, corrective ; hardness has 
in it no hope. . . . Agony and anguish — O, in 
these, far more than in sunshine, I can read a 
meaning and believe in infinite love. 



150 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. | June 25. 

25. 

CURSES. 

I SAY unto you which hear, Love your enemies, 
do good to them which hate you, bless them that 
curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use 
you. — Luke vi, 27, 28. 

MEN cannot injure us except so far as they 
exasperate us to forget ourselves. No 
man is really dishonored except by his own 
act. Calumny, injustice, ingratitude — tlie only 
harm these can do us is by making us bitter 
or gloomy, by shutting our hearts or souring 
our affections. We rob them of their power if 
they only leave us more sweet and forgiving. 
Love transmutes all curses and forces them to 
rain down blessings. 

26. 

AGONY OF SIN. 

And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is 
greater than I can bear. — Gen. iv, 13. 

THE penal agonies of sin are chiefly those 
which are executed within. To live ! that 
is hell, to live when you fain would die. . . . 
Worse than the viper's tooth is the punishment 
of no longer striving after goodness or aspiring 



June 27.] THE SOUL DEGRADED. 151 

after the life of God. There is no punishment 
equal to the punishment of being base. To 
sink from sin to sin, from infamy to infamy, 
that is the fearful retribution which is executed 
in the spiritual world. 

O, the unutterable anguish of a soul that is 
conscious of having degraded itself ! A noble 
mind fears that; and the nobler the mind the 
keener the suffering. A spirit that is capable 
of infinite misery is capable of receiving the 
infinitude of goodness. 

27. 

THE SOUL DEGRADED. 

The Son of man is come to seek and to save that 
which was lost. — Luke xix, lo. 

CAIN is the dread type of hell. There is 
such a thing as being salted with fire; you 
cannot escape yourself. Go where you will, 
you carry with you a soul degraded, its power 
lost, its finer sensibilities destroyed. Just as 
the man cannot see through the glass on which 
he breathes, sin darkens the windows of the 
soul. 



152 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June 28. 

28. 

A HARDENED HEART. 

A NEW spirit will I put within you : and I will take 
away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give 
you a heart of flesh. — Ezek. xxxvi, 26. 

TF a man wanted to have a thoroughly callous 
-'• and hardened heart, we can tell him of no 
way so sure as this : Let him become familiar 
with the distresses of his fellow-men, and do 
nothing to relieve them ; let him read of pau- 
per misery, and content himself with theorizing 
about the improvidence of the poor ; let him 
listen to appeals from the pulpit which attempt 
to move his charity, and pass the plate without 
a sacrifice — we will promise him his sensi- 
bilities shall soon be placed beyond the power 
of wounding. 

29. 

THE DEEPEST CURSE OF SIN. 

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because 
thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and 
above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly shalt thou 
go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. — Gen. 
iii> 14. 

IF anyone congratulates himself that sin has 
brought to him no positive misery, my 
brother, I pray you to remember that God's 



June 30.] THE STRENGTH OF SIN. 153 

worst CLirse was pronounced upon the serpent 
tempter. Apparently it was for less than 
that pronounced on the woman, but really 
it was far more terrible. Not pain, not shame 
— no, these are remedial, and may bring re- 
pentance at last — but to sink the angel in 
the animal, the spirit in the flesh; to be a 
reptile, and to eat the dust of degradation 
as if it were natural food. Eternity has no 
damnation deeper than that. 



30. 

THE STRENGTH OF SIN. 

What shall we say then ? Is the law sin? God for- 
bid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law : for I 
had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt 
not covet. — Rom. vii, 7. 

SIN would not be so violent if it were not 
for the attempt of God's law to restrain it. 
It is the law which makes sin strong. *^ The 
strength of sin, " Paul says, " is the law.*' God 
giveth us the victory through Christ. And 
when we are familiar with Paul's trains of 
thinking, we find this idea coming in perpet- 
ually. It runs like a colored thread through 
embroidery, appearing on the upper surface 



154 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [June 30. 

every now and then in a different shape — a 
leaf, it may be, or a flower ; but the same 
thread still, if you only trace it back with your 
finger. And this is the golden recurring 
thread in the mind of Paul. Restraint and 
law cannot check sin. The love of God in 
Christ, that, and only that, can give man the 
victory. 



gIULY. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



JULY. 

Exposure i 

Excommunication 2 

Punishment 3 

Remorse 4 

Self-respect Lost 5 

''Too Late to Begin" 6 

Suicide 7 

Judgment Day 8 

Repentance 9 

Penitence 10 

Penance 11 

Earnestness 12 

Anxiety 13 

A Man's Last Chance 14 

Confession ...,,.. . , 15 

Apology 16 

What is Forgiveness? 17 

Why Forgive Others ? ......... 18 

''What Shall I Do to be Saved?" ig 

One Law for All 20 

The First Thing to Do 21 

Seeking God , 22 

Born of the Spirit 23 

Delivered from Evil , 24 

Justification . 25 

Redemption 26 

What is Absolution ? 27 

Can We Absolve ? 28 

The Object of Absolution 29 

Absolution Gives Hope 30 

How Absolution Gives Hope.. ..,,..,„.,,-.,,, 31 



July I.] EXPOSURE, 157 

» ^^ 

1. 

EXPOSURE. 
God shall bring every work into judgment, with every 
secret thing, whether it be good, or v/hether it be evil. — 
Eccles. xii, 14. 

MANY a one becomes hardened [after ex- 
posure] who would otherwise have re- 
mained tolerably happy; in consequence of 
which we blame the exposure and not the 
guilt; we say, If it had been hushed up, all would 
have been well. Do not think so. It is true 
that remorse was produced by exposure, and 
that remorse was fatal ; the sorrow which work- 
eth death arose from that exposure, and so far 
exposure may be called the cause : had it 
never taken place respectability and compara- 
tive peace might have continued ; but outward 
respectability is not change of heart. ... A 
sin undetected is the soil out of which fresh 

sin will grow. 

2. 

EXCOMMUNICATION. 
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, . „ . deliver 
such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, 
that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 
— I Cor. V, 4, 5. 

SEE how the anger of society represents and 
makes credible God's wrath. So long as 
the Corinthians petted this sinner conscience 



158 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [July 3. 

slumbered ; but when the voice of men was 
raised in condemnation conscience began its 
dreadful work, and then their anger became a 
type of coming doom. Remember, therefore, 
there is a real power lodged in humanity to 
bind as well as to loose; and remember that 
though man, God's representative, may exer- 
cise this fearful power wrongly, too long, and 
too severely, in venial faults, yet there is still 
a power, a terrible human power, which may 
make outcasts and drive men to infamy and 
ruin. Only, therefore, so far as man is Christ- 
like can he exercise this power in an entirely 
true and perfect manner. The world's ex- 
communication or banishment is almost al- 
ways unjust. 

(See on Absolution, July 27.) 

, 3. 

PUNISHMENT. 

When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die ; 
and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn 
the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life ; the 
same wicked man shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood 
will I require at thine hand. — Ezek. iii, 18. 

TS the object of punishment threefold only — 
•* to serve as an example to others, to ameli- 
orate the offender, and in some cases to defend 



July 4.] REMORSE, 159 

society by its entire removal ? Or is there a 

fourth element, the expression of righteous 

vengeance ? For I cannot look upon vengeance 

as merely remedial. The sense of indignation 

which arises in the human bosom spontaneously 

against some crimes must, in a degree, be a 

reflection of that which resides in the mind of 

Deity. 

4. 

REMORSE. 
God hath given them the spirit of remorse, eyes that 
they should not see, and ears that they should not hear. 
— Rom. xi, 8. 

REMORSE is the consciousness of wrong- 
doing with no sense of love. Penitence 
is the same consciousness with the feeling of 
tenderness and gratitude added. 

Bad as the results have been in the world of 
making light of sin, those of brooding over it 
too much have been worse. Remorse has done 
more harm than even hardihood. It was re- 
morse which fixed Judas in an unalterable 
destiny ; it was remorse which filled the monas- 
teries for ages with men and women whose 
lives became useless to their fellow-creatures. 
. . . You remember how Christ treated sin. 
Sin of oppression and hypocrisy indignantly, 
but sin of frailty — " Hath no man condemned 



160 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Julys. 

thee?" "No man, Lord." '^Neither do I 
condemn thee ; go, and sin no more." As if 
he would bid us think more of what we may 
be than of what we have been. 

SELF-RESPECT LOST. 

Cleanse tliou me from secret faults. Keep back thy 
servant also from presumptuous sins ; let them not have 
dominion over me. — Psalm xix, I2, 13. 

IF a man lose the world's respect he can re- 
^ treat back upon the consciousness of the 
God within. But if a man lose his own respect, 
he sinks down and down, and deeper yet, until 
he can get it back again by feeling that he is 
sublimely loved and he dares at last to respect 
that which God vouchsafes to care for. 

6. 

♦TOO LATE TO BEGIN." 

Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy king- 
dom. — Luke xxiii, 42. 

PERHAPS you feel that the best days of life 
are gone, and it is too late to begin things 
which were in your power once ; still, my re- 
pentant brother, there is encouragement from 
your Master yet. Wake up to the opportu- 
nities that yet remain. Ten years of life — five 



July 7.] SUICIDE. 161 

years — one year — say you have only that, will 
you sleep that away because you have already 
slept too long ? Eternity is crying out to you 
louder and louder as you near its brink. Rise, 
be going; learn what you are not fit for, and 
give up wishing for it; learn what you can do, 
and do it with the energy of a man. 

7. 

SUICIDE. 

When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and 
sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. — James i, 15. 

THE essential guilt of suicide is unbelief; 
that is, despair of God's love and good- 
ness. . . . What is the essential guilt of suicide 
is settled by the reply of Christ when the evil 
suggestion was presented to him. He did not 
allege the Sixth Commandment, which he as- 
suredly would have done had suicide been 
murder ; but, '* Thou shalt not tempt " (that is, 
try, make experiment of) '^ the Lord thy God." 
He treated it as a temptation, not to murder, 
but to distrust. ... It is only loosely that we 
call suicide self-murder; well enough for pop- 
ular conversation, but utterly unfit for the 
expression of accurate thought. All this comes 
from the loose way in which people think of sin. 
11 



162 THOUGHTS ON GOD AX D MAN. [July 8. 

8. 

JUDGMENT DAY. 
These shall go away into everlasting punishment: 
but the righteous into life eternal. — Matt, xxv, 46. 

THE judgment coming of the Son of man 
takes place wherever there is evil grown 
ripe, whenever corruption is complete. And 
the gathering of the Roman eagles is but a 
specimen of the way in which judgment at 
last overtakes every city, every country, and 
every man in whom evil has reached the point 
where there is no possibility of cure. 

9. 

REPENTANCE. 
I HAVE somewhat against thee, because thou hast left 
thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art 
fallen, and repent, and do the first works ; or else I will 
come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick 
out of his place, except thou repent. — Rev. ii, 4, 5. 

REPENT." But that is precisely what 
man cannot do ; it is alone the gift of 
the grace of God. The soul is powerless when 
it acts upon itself ; the heart cannot produce 
one emotion simply by volition ; therefore the 
apostle wisely gives us the means by which 
repentance may be produced : the first is, 
*' Remember from whence thou art fallen;" 
the next is, ** Do the first works," 



July II.] PENANCE, 163 

lO. 

PENITENCE. 

He said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things ; 
thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saitli unto him, 
Feed my sheep. — John xxi, 17. 

I BELIEVE the feeling of true penitence 
-■■ would express itself in such words as 
these: There is a righteousness and a beauty, 
though my life exhibits little of it. In that 
I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the sur- 
passing loveliness. My doings? They are 
worthless; I cannot endure to think of them. 
I am not thinking of them. I have some- 
thing else to think of. There, there, in that 
life I see it. And so the Christian — gazing 
not on wliat he is, but on what he desires 
to be — dares in penitence to say, That right- 
eousness is mine. 

11. 

PENANCE. 

Follow peace with all men, and lioliness, without 
which no man shall see the Lord. — Heb. xii, 14. 

nrO suffer pain for others without flinching, 

^ that is our Master's example; to accept 

poverty in order to do good for others, that 

is our Saviour's principle ; but pain for the 



164 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [July 12. 

mere sake of pain, that is not Christian ; to 
become poor for the sake and the merit of 
being poor, is selfishness after all. To bear 
pain rather than surrender truth, or in order 
to save another is positive enjoyment as well 
as ennobling to the soul. 

12. 

EARNESTNESS. 

The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the 
violent take it by force. — Matt, xi, 12. 

TIME and pains will do anything. This 
world is given as the prize for the men in 
earnest ; and that which is true of this world 
is truer still of the world to come. Only there 
is this difference : In the pursuit of wealth, 
knowledge, or reputation, circumstances have 
power to mar the wisest schemes. . . . But 
in the kingdom of Christ, where inward char- 
acter is the prize, no chance can rob earnestness 
of its exact proportioned due of success. 

All sincerity forgets egotism. Moses' skin 
shone, but he imst not that the skin of his face 
shone. 



July 14.] A MAN'S LAST CHANCE, 165 

13. 

ANXIETY. 

Have not I commanded thee ? Be strong and of a 
good courage ; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed : 
for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou 
goest. — ^Josh. i, 9. 

ONE sorrow, one deep, corroding anxiety, 
will wear deeper furrows in a cheek and 
brow than ten campaigns can do. One day's 
suspense will exhaust more and leave the 
cheek paler than a week's fasting. Thus it 
is a low estimate of the depth of apostolic 
trial to say that physical suffering was its 
chief element. And if this be true how 
much more degrading is it so to treat of 
the sufferings of Christ, of whom the prophet 
said, '* He shall see of the travail of his soul 
and be satisfied." 

14. 

A MAN'S LAST CHANCE. 

And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone 
this year also, till 1 shall dig about it, and dung it : and 
if it bear fruit, well : and if not, then after that thou 
shalt cut it down. — Luke xiii, 8, g. 

THAT which is declared of the world before 
the Flood, of Nineveh, of Jerusalem, is the 
history of each separate soul. Every man has 



166 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [July 15. 

his day of grace : what in vulgar English we 
call his *^ chance/' There comes to each man 
a crisis in his destiny, when evil influences 
have been removed, or an escape, or in some 
season of solitary thoughtfulness or disap- 
pointment. It were an awful thing to w^atch 
such a spirit if we knew that he is on trial 
now, by which his everlasting destiny is to be 
decided. 

15. 

CONFESSION. 

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to for- 
give us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous- 
ness. — I John I. 9. 

BY confession we sever ourselves from our 
sin and we disown it. We say, ** I put it 
from me ; I repudiate it. Not I, O Lord, but 
sin that dwelleth in me. I struggle to the foot 
of thy Cross." Such was the immediate relief 
of David: *^ I have sinned." Instantly does 
the answer come : ** The Lord also hath put 
away thy sin ; thou shalt not die." Such the 
relief of the publican : *^ He went down to his 
house justified." 



July i6.] APOLOGY. 167 

16. 

APOLOGY. 

I WILL arise and go to my father, and will say unto 
him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before 
thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. 
— Luke XV, i8, 19. 

THE first noblest attitude of man is in- 
nocence ; the second noblest, apology. 
The manliness of saying, ** I have done 
wrong, forgive me,'* is as high above that 
of the mere man of honor as the brilliancy 
of heaven's sun transcends the glitter of an 
earthly lamp. 

When was it that the younger son in the 
parable received the ring and the robe, and 
the banquet^ which represents the rapture 
of the sense of being forgiven } When he 
had fortitude . enough to go back, mile by 
mile, step by step, every inch of the way 
he had gone wrong, had borne unflinchingly 
the sneer of his father's domestics, and, 
worse tlian all, the sarcasms of his immac- 
ulate brother, and manfully said out, "Father, 
I have sinned against heaven and before 
thee." 



168 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [July 17. 

17. 

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS? 

Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine 
iniquities. — Psalm li, g. 

CHRISTIAN forgiveness is not the nat- 
ural growth of the heart, but an exotic 
in an unkindly soil. Forgiveness implies two 
things, favor and remission of punishment. 
. . . God's forgiveness is suspended on the 
condition of our forgiveness. 



18. 

WHY FORGIVE OTHERS? 

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ; 
that ye may be children of your leather which is in 
heaven. — Matt, v, 44, 45. 

DO you recollect the ground on which 
he enforced forgiveness of injuries .^ 
A strange ground, surely, w^hich never would 
have occurred except to One whose life 
was habitual imitation, . . . *^ That ye may 
be the children of [that is, resemble] your 
Father/' 



July 19.] " WHA T SHALL I DO TO BE SA VED ? " 169 

19. 

♦'WHAT SHALL I DO TO BE SAVED?" 

If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord 
Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God 
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 
— Rom. X, 9. 

ARM yourself with the laws of nature and 
you may call down the lightning from 
the sky ; surround yourself with glass, and 
the lightning may play innocuously a few 
inches from you : it cannot touch you ; you 
have obeyed the conditions' of nature, and 
nature is on your side. In the same way 
there are conditions in the world of Spirit, 
by compliance with which God's Spirit comes 
into the soul with all its revelations, as 
surely as lightning from the sky, and as in- 
variably — such conditions as these : " The 
secret of the Lord is with them that fear 
him." "If we love one another God dwelleth 
in us." ** If any man will do his will, he 
shall know of the doctrine;" reverence, love, 
meekness, contrition, obedience — these con- 
ditions having taken place, God enters into 
the soul. 



170 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [July 20. 



20. 

ONE LAW FOR ALL. 

Ip" any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
doctrine. — John vii, 17. 

THE condition of spiritual wisdom and cer- 
tainty in truth is obedience to the will of 
God. . . . Observe the universality of the law: 
*' If any man will do his will, he shall know/' 
. . . Annexed to this condition, or a part of it, 
is earnestness. " If any man will do his will." 
It is not written, "If any man does his will," 
but if any man has the spirit and desire. If 
we are in earnest, we shall persevere. . . . 
Act, be merciful and gentle — honest ; force 
yourself to abound in little services ; try to do 
good to others, and by all the laws of the 
human heart, by the word of God, you shall 
not be left in doubt. 

21. 

THE FIRST THING TO DO. 

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might ; for there is no work ... in the grave, whither 
thou goest. — Eccles. ix, 10. 

THIS was Christ's rule : '*If any man will 
do his will.'* . . . Whatever else may be 
wrong, it must be right to be pure — to be just 
and tender, and merciful and honest. It must 



July 23.] BORN OF THE SPIRIT, ITl 

be right to love and to deny one's self. Men 
begin the other way. They say, ^' If I could 
but believe, then I would make my life true/' 
No ; God says, Act, make the life true, and 
then you will be able to believe. Live in 
earnest and you will know. 

22. 

SEEKING GOD. 

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock : if any man 
hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, 
and will sup with him, and he with me. — Rev. iii, 20. 

WE do not seek God, God seeks us. There 
is a Spirit pervading time and space who 
seeks the souls of men. At last the seeking 
becomes reciprocal — the divine Presence is 
felt afar, and the soul begins to turn toward it. 
Then when we begin to seek God, we become 
conscious that God is seeking us. 

23. 

BORN OF THE SPIRIT. 

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Ex- 
cept a man be l)orn of water and of the Spirit, he cannot 
enter into the kingdom of God. — John iii, 5. 

** F^XCEPT a man be born again " — not he 

^ shall not, but — 'Mie cannot enter into 

heaven." There is nothinn: in him which has 



172 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [July 24. 

affinity to anything in the Judge's bosom. A 
sympathy for that which is pure implies a 
repulsion of that which is impure. Hatred of 
evil is in proportion to the strength of love for 
good. To love good intensely is to hate evil 
intensely. Win the mind of Christ now, or 
else his sympathy for human nature will not 
save you from, but only insure, the recoil of 
abhorrence at last: ^' Depart from me ! I never 
knew you/' 

O, it is an awful thing to see the blossom 
still upon the tree when the autumn is 
past, and the winter is at hand. An awful 
thing to see a man who ought to be clothed 
in Christ still living the life of the flesh and 
of passion ; the summer is past, the harvest 
is ended, and he is not saved. 

24. 

DELIVERED FROM EVIL. 

I PRAY not that thou shouldest take them out of the 
world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. 
— John xvii, 15. 

NOT from physical evil, not from pain; 
Christ does not exempt his own from 
such kind of evil. Nay, we hesitate to call 



July 25.] JUSTIFICATION. . 173 

pain and sorrow evils, when we remember 
what bright characters they have made. . . . 
But the evil from which Christ's sanctification 
separates the soul is the worst of evils — 
properly speaking, the only evil — sin, revolt 
from God, disloyalty to conscience, tyranny 
of the passions, strife of our self-will in con- 
flict with the loving will of God. 

25. 

JUSTIFICATION. 

Being justified by faith, we have peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. — Rom. v, i. 

JUSTIFIED means acquitted, recognized, 
^ or acknowledged. Justification is a state 
of acceptance with God — admitted good- 
ness. There are two states of justification, 
by the law and by faith. Justification by the 
law implies a scrupulous and accurate per- 
formance of minute acts of obedience in every 
particular ; justification by faith is acceptance 
with God, not because a man is perfect, but 
because he does all in a trusting, large, gen- 
erous spirit, actuated by a desire to please 
God, 



174 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [July 26. 

26. 

REDEMPTION. 

For in that he died, he died unto sin once : but in 
that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye 
also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive 
unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Rom. vi, 
10, II. 

THERE are two kinds of death — one in 
sin, before redemption ; the other to sin, 
which is redemption. . . . This is Paul's ar- 
gument : If one died as the representative of 
all, then in that death all died ; not that they 
were dead before, but dead then. Every 
Christian is dead in Christ's death and risen 
in Christ's resurrection. 

Redemption is this — to forget self in God. . . . 
The Christian forgets himself in the feeling that 
he has to live here for the performance of the 
will of God. 

27. 

WHAT IS ABSOLUTION? 

To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also : for if I 
forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes 
forgave I it in the person of Christ. — 2 Cor. ii, 10. 

WHAT is forgiveness.'^ It is God reconciled 
to us. What is absolution 1 It is the 
authoritative declaration that God is recon- 



July 28.] CAN WE ABSOLVE? 175 

ciled. . . . When God forgives a sin it does 
not follow that he stops its consequences ; for 
example, when he forgives an intemperate 
man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does 
not rest on his health, . . . but by producing 
softness and grateful penitence, it transforms 
them into blessings. This is God's forgive- 
ness, and absolution is the conveyance to the 
conscience of the conviction of forgiveness ; 
to absolve is to free — to comfort by strength- 
ening—to afford repose from fear. 

28. 

CAN WE ABSOLVE? 

Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. 
— John XX, 23. 

SAY, if you will, that was a peculiar power 
limited to the apostles. Nevertheless, 
the fact cannot be controverted that every 
day and every hour society — man — exerts this 
power. For example, a man may be in 
military life dissipated, which is morally as 
bad as cowardice; a w^oman may be selfish or 
censorious, or kill by bitter words ; and yet 
these are faults not made hopeless by society ; 
they do not blight character. But for a coward, 



176 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [July 29. 

or a *^ daughter of shame " once fallen, there 
is no return. Down, down, and deeper yet to 
the deeps of infamy must one sink on whom 
society has set its black mark. The sins which 
society has bound on earth are bound ; the 
sins which society has loosed are thereby 
robbed of a portion of their curse. Paul well 
knew how the sentence of society crushes. 

29. 

THE OBJECT OF ABSOLUTION. 

Ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest 
perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with over- 
much sorrow. — 2 Cor. ii, 7. 

THE love of God would be unintelligible 
unless we had loving feelings of our own, 
unless we felt the love of men to us. . . . And 
God's forgiveness is unintelligible, actually in- 
credible, except through human forgiveness 
which we see. . . . Suppose that this Corin- 
thian offender had been met on every side w^ith 
horror and detestation, had seen nowhere a 
pitying eye. Is it not certain, by the laws of 
our humanity, that this judgment of society 
would have seemed to him a reflection of the 
judgment of God ? On the other hand, would 
not the forgiveness of the Corinthian society 



July3o.j ABSOLUTION GIVES HOPE. 1T7 

have caused the hope of God's forgiveness to 
dawn upon his heart ? And this in exact pro- 
portion, just as the men who so forgave were 
holy men. The more like God they were, the 
more would their forgiveness be a type and 
assurance of God's forgiveness. 

30. 

ABSOLUTION GIVES HOPE. 

That ye may know that the Son of man hath power 
upon earth to forgive sins, ( he said unto the sick of the 
palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, 
and go into thine house. — Luke v, 24. 

SOME of us can tell you how the recollec- 
tion of sin committed haunts men like a 
fiend. And so long as society lays its ban 
on the offender, or so long as he feels that 
a secret crime, if once known, would be 
accursed of the world, so long hope appears 
to him impossible. It is in vain that you 
speak of God's love and mercy in Christ to 
such a man. He wnll cry, ^'Yes; but is he 
merciful to me?" Therefore, over and above 
the general declaration of God's mercy, there 
is needed, if you would comfort truly, a 
special, personal, human assurance to the in- 
dividual. 
12 



178 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [July 31. 

31. 

HOW ABSOLUTION GIVES HOPE. 

When ye come into a house, salute it. And if the 
house be worthy, let your peace come upon it : but if it 
be not worthy, let your peace return to you. — Matt, x, 
12, 13. 

YOU will object, perchance : If God has for- 
given the sinner, a man's word cannot add 
to it ; if he has not forgiven him, a man's word 
cannot alter it. Yes, that is true ; but now, in 
reply, consider a distinct command of Christ: 
**Into whatsoever house ye enter, first say. 
Peace be to this house. And if the son of 
peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it : 
if not it shall turn to you again." Now a man 
might have said, What good is there in saying 
"peace?" If God's peace be in the family, 
you cannot add to it ; if not, you cannot alter 
it. But Christ says. Give your blessing : it 
will not create peace, but it will make it felt. 
. . . So if the sin be forgiven, absolution will 
convey the soothing conviction to the soul ; if 
not, your absolution will turn to you again. 
When we treat the guilty with tenderness, 
hope rises in them toward God ; their hearts 
say, " They love us ; will not God forgive and 
love U3 too ? ** 



flUGUST. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



_♦ , 

AUG. 



The Sinner's Reception i 

Ecstasy , 2 

Children of Light 3 

Feeling 4 

Religious Feeling 5 

Religious Excitement 6 

Courage 7 

Dare to be True 8 

Zeal 9 

Fluency and Eloquence 10 

Imitation and Copy 11 

The Ambition of the World 12 

The Ambition of the Christian 13 

Influence Resides in the Will 14 

Influence of the World 15 

Unconscious Influence 16 

Friendship 17 

How to Retain Friendship 18 

Alone . . 19 

Solitude 20 

Suff"ering. 21 

Sorrow 22 

The Sanctifying Power of Sorrow 23 

The Function of Sorrow 24 

Sympathy 25 

Hiding Our Face from Jesus 26 

Brotherhood 27 

The Beggar 28 

The Poor 29 

The Middle Class 30 

Would You Be Rich ? 31 



Aug. I.] THE SINNER'S RECEPTION. 181 

1. 

THE SINNER'S RECEPTION. 

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the 
best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his 
hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring hither the 
fatted calf, and kill it ; and l(?t us eat, and be merry. 
— Luke XV, 22, 23. 

'T^HIS banquet represents to us two things. 
^ It tells of the father's gladness on the 
son's return. That represents God's joy on 
the reformation of a sinner. It tells of a 
banquet and a dance given to the long lost 
son. That represents the sinner's gladness 
when he first understood that God was 
reconciled to him in Christ. There is a 
strange, almost wild, rapture, a strong gush 
of love and happiness in those days which 
are called the days of the first conversion. 
. . . Joy is not delayed till we deserve it. 
Just as soon as a sinful man trusts that the 
mercy of God in Christ has done away with 
his transgression, the ring and the robe and 
the shoes are his. 



182 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Aug. 2. 

2. 

ECSTASY. 

And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered 
with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and 
praising God. — Acts iii, 8. 

JOY seems to be felt more vividly and more 
exuberantly by men who have sinned 
much than by men who have grown up con- 
sistently from childhood with religious educa- 
tion. Rapture belongs to him whose sins 
which are forgiven are many. ... It is meet 
that God should be glad on the reclamation of 
a sinner. It is meet that the sinner, looking 
down into the dreadful chasm over which he 
had been tottering, should feel a shudder of 
delight through his frame on thinking of his 
escape. ... A consistent Christian may not 
have rapture ; but he lias that which is much 
better than rapture, calmness — God's serene 
and perpetual presence. One to whom much 
is forgiven has much joy. . . . but a terrible 
struggle is in store for him yet. Grudge him 
not one hour of unclouded exultation. But 
religion's best gift, that belongs to him who 
has lived steadily and walked with duty. Joy 
is well in its way, but a few flashes of joy are 



Aug. 3.] CHILDREN OF LIGHT, 183 



trifles in comparison with a life of peace. 
Which is best: the flash of joy lighting up 
the whole heart, and then darkness until 
the next flash comes, or the steady calm 
sunlight of day in which men work ? 

8. 

CHILDREN OF LIGHT. 

The children of this world are in their generation 
wiser than the children of light. — Luke xvi, 8. 

" /CHILDREN of light " is a wide term. 
^^ There is a difference between life and 
light. To have light is to perceive truth and 
know duty. To have life is to be able to live 
out truth and to perform duty. Many a man 
has clear light who has not taken hold of life. 
Many a man is the child of light who does not 
walk as the child of life. So far as a man feels 
that eternity is long, time short, so far he is a 
child of light. So far as he believes the body 
nothing in comparison with the soul, the pres- 
ent in comparison with the future, so far as 
he has felt the power of sin and the sanctify- 
ing power of the death of Christ, so far he is a 
child of light. 



184 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. 4. 

4. 

FEELING. 
Then Job answered and said, I have heard many such 
things : miserable comforters are ye all. — Job xvi, i, 2. 

\1 ZE prize feeling and praise its possessor. 

^ ^ But feeling is only a sickly exotic in itself 

— a passive quality, having in it nothing moral, 

no temptation, no victory. A man is no more 

a good man for having feeling than he is for 

having a delicate ear for music, or a far-seeing 

optic nerve. 

5. 

RELIGIOUS FEELING. 
I HAVE somewhat against thee, because thou hast left 
thy first love. — Rev. ii, 4. 

TO say that in proportion as wisdom and 
faith increase, in that proportion will love 
and tenderness abate, is to proclaim ruin to 
the Christian character. 

Of the church of Ephesus, . . . her emotions 
toward God had lost their strength and vivid- 
ness, and therefore her Lord declared that he 
would not have the outward husk without the 
inward kernel. From which it is manifest 
that love has an inward grace and beauty, 
preciousness and value in itself; the act is 
dear to God simply because of the affection 
that has prompted it, 



Aug. 7.] COURAGE. 185 

6. 

RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT. 

Then he called for a light, and sprang m, and came 
trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and 
brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be 
saved ? — Acts xvi, 29, 30. 

YE that have been impressed, beware how 
you let those impressions die away. Die 
they will and must ; we cannot live in ex- 
citement forever ; but beware of their leaving 
behind them nothing except a languid, jaded 
heart. If God ever gave you the excitements 
of religion, breaking in upon your monotony 
as John's teaching broke in upon that of 
Jerusalem, take care. There is no restoring 
of elasticity to the spring that has been over- 
bent. Let impression pass on at once to 

action. 

7. 

COURAGE. 

I HAVE fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith. — 2 Tim. iv, 7. 

NONE but a brave man can be a good man. 
The very tenderness of the coward will 
be pitiful. . . . Contrast the courage which 
for Christ's sake dares to be called a coward, 
and bear shame. 



186 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. 8. 

8. 
DARE TO BE TRUE. 
Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, 
him will I confess also before my Father which is in 
heaven. — Matt, x, 32. 

KNOWING a truth is one thing, being able 
to express it is quite another thing ; and 
then again, to be able to express a truth is one 
thing, and to dare to do it is another thing 
altogether. Utterance implies both power 

and courage. 

9. 

ZEAL. 
It is good to be zealously affected always in a good 
thing. — Gal. iv, 18. 

NO enthusiasmwill last long that is not deeply 
based — a few sarcastic sneers will shake 
it, for if it comes from following the enthusiasm 
of others, it will go with the coldness of others. 
Zeal, even though it exceed the bounds of 
righteousness, is a more hopeful thing than 
lukewarmness ; better to be like the apostle 
Paul before he was an apostle, better to be 
like the sons of thunder, better to be like the 
ancient prophets using the stern language of 
denunciation, than like Pilate, unconcerned as 
to the fate of his prisoner so long as he him- 
self was absolved from blame. 



Aug. II.] IMITATION AND COPY, 187 

lO. 

FLUENCY AND ELOQUENCE. 

The officers answered, Never man spake like this 
man. — John vii, 46. 

THERE is a great distinction between elo- 
quence and fluency; fluency is command 
of words, eloquence of words which express 
thought. Fluency John had not ; short, sharp, 
decisive words were his — no ornament or trick 
of oratory there. Let us never covet fluency ; 
it is a fatal gift. Let every man covet elo- 
quence. It is to speak the right thing at the 
right time, in the right way. Silence may be 
eloquence, and stammering lips may be elo- 
quent. 

11. 

IMITATION AND COPY. 

What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your 
faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, 
and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable 
with God. For even hereunto were ye called : because 
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that 
ye should follow his steps. — I Peter ii, 20, 

DISTINGUISH between a model and an 
example. You copy the outline of a 
model, you imitate the spirit of an example. 
Christ is our example. Christ is not our 



188 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. 12. 

model. You might copy the life of Christ, 
make him a model in every act, and yet you 
might be not one whit more of a Christian 
than before. . . . On the other hand, you 
might imitate Christ, get his Spirit, do not one 
single act which he did, but every act in his 
spirit ; you might be rich, whereas he was 
poor ; never teach, whereas he was teaching 
always ; and yet the spirit of his self-devotion 
might have saturated your whole being and 
penetrated into the life of every act. Then 
Christ would have become your example; for 
we can only imitate that of w^hich we have 
caught the spirit. 

12. 

THE AMBITION OF THE WORLD. 

Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased ; and 
he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. — Luke xiv, 11. 

WHEN a man comes to the close of his 
existence he begins to feel as if he had 
not had justice done him — he begins to feel as 
if he had not been understood, he is not 
where he ought to be. It is the adoration of 
self that makes men miserable. . . . Only let 
it be known to a proud spirit that one man 



Aug. 13.] AMBITION OF THE CHRISTIAN. 189 

has sneered, it matters not that the world is 
deafening him with its admiration, that sneer 
will shoot a pang of wretchedness through the 
hour of his proudest triumph. 



13. 

THE AMBITION OF THE CHRISTIAN. 

Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from 
me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done. 
— Luke xxii, 42. 

'*nrHY will be done ! " To say this in every 
' dispensation, be it what it may, is the 
whole of religion ; for what have we to do but 
to have our wills entirely merged in that of 
our Father ? And when this is done, we are 
ripe for the garner. 

There is one thing, and but one on earth, 
worth living for — and that is to do God's 
work, and gradually grow in conformity to 
his image by mortification and self-denial 
and prayer. 

Set before you high models. Try to live 
with the most generous, and to observe their 
deeds. Be contented, yet aspire ; that should 
be the faith of all, and the two are quite 
compatible. 



190 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. 14. 

14. 

INFLUENCE RESIDES IN THE WILL. 

The good that I would, I do not: but the evil which 
I would not, that I do. — Rom. vii, 19. 

THE secret of influence is will ; not good- 
ness, not badness — both bad and good 
may have it — but will. You cannot counter- 
feit will if you have it not. 

It is the price which all who are possessed 
of influence must pay, that their acts must be 
measured not in themselves, but according to 
their influence on others. 

15. 

INFLUENCE OF THE WORLD. 

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, 
Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers 
of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. 
— Rev. xviii, 4. 

MEN, when they mix together, corrupt each 
other ; each contributes his own vices 
and his irreverence of the others' good to 
destroy every standard of goodness, and each 
in contact lo^es his own excellences, 



Aug. 17.] FRIENDSHIP. 191 

16. 

UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

Iron sharpeneth iron ; so a man sharpeneth the 
countenance of his friend. — Prov. xxvii, 17. 

INDIRECT influence is often far more suc- 
^ cessful than that which is direct, and for 
this reason : the direct aims that we make to 
convert others may be contradicted by our 
lives, while the indirect influence is our very 
life. What we really are, somehow or other, 
will ooze out in tone, in look, in act, and this 
tells upon those who come in daily contact 
with us. 

It is not talent, nor power, nor gifts that do 
the work of God, but it is that which lies 
within the power of the humblest ; it is the 
simple, earnest life hid with Christ in God. 



17. 

FRIENDSHIP. 

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. 
■ — Prov. xiii, 20. 

CULTIVATE y<3J/;////^r intimacy only with 
those who Igve good and God. 



192 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. i8. 

18. 

HOW TO RETAIN FRIENDSHIP. 
A MAN that hath friends must show himself friendly : 
and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. 
— Prov. xviii, 24. 

OFTEN it is the safest way to shut the eyes 
and be half blind to many things in a 
friend's character, ... like pearls in the sea- 
shell — aberrations from healthful nature, if you 
will, but more tender and tinted with heaven- 
lier iridescence than even the shell itself. 

Learn never to smooth away, through fear 
of results, the difficulties of love or friendship 
by concealment or a subtle suppression of 
facts or feelings. Reprove, explain, submit 
with all gentleness, and yet with all truth and 
openness. The deadliest poison you can in- 
still into the wine of life is a fearful reserve 
which creates suspicion, or a lie which will 
canker and kill your own love, and through 
that your friend's. 

19. 

ALONE. 
What, could ye not watch with me one hour ? 
— Matt, xxvi, 40. 

THE life that is the deepest and the truest 
will feel most vividly both its desolation 
and its majesty. We live and die alone. God 



Aug. 20.] SOLITUDE, 193 

and our own souls — we fall back upon them 
at last. 

Elijah, stern and iron as he was, should be 
a warning to any common an to expect that 
many a day he will have to sit under his jun- 
iper tree in despondency and bitter sense of 
isolation and uselessness. 

20. 

SOLITUDE. 

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart 
into a desert place, and rest a while. — Mark vi, 31. 

IN speaking of Knox's Rambles^ and the 
effect of association with men in sharpen- 
ing the intellect, you remark that this seems 
inconsistent with the fact that great spirits 
have been nursed in solitude. Yes, but not the 
solitude of the plowman. Moses was forty 
years in Midian, but he had the education of 
Egypt before, and habits of thought and ob- 
servation began. I remember a line of Goethe's 
in which he says : 

** Talent forms itself in solitude. 
Character in the storms of life." 

The soul collects its mightiest forces by 
being thrown in upon itself. . . . But on the 
13 



H 



194 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Aug. 21. 

Other hand, solitude unbroken from earliest 
infancy, or with nothing to sharpen the mind 
either by collision with other minds or the ex- 
])ectation of some new sphere of action, 
shortly would, I suppose, rust the mental 

energies. 

21. 

SUFFERING. 

I TAKE pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in 
necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's 
sake : for when I am weak, then am I strong. — 2 Cor. 
xii, 10. 

SUFFERING is of two kinds: pain which 
we endure in our own persons — Christ was 
*' a Man of sorrows ; " and pain which we know 
by familiarity with others' suffering — Christ 
was "acquainted with grief." 

The Christian rejoices in tribulation — in 
God ; but that in spite of, not because of, trib- 
ulation. 

We are perfected through suffering. What 
worthy crown can any son of man wear upon 
this earth, except a crown of thorns ? A 
Christian's motto everywhere and always is 
Victory. 

A man's work is not done upon earth as 
long as God has anything for him to suffer ; 



Aug. 22.] SORROW, 195 

the greatest of our victories is to be won in 
passive endurance ; in humbleness, in reliance, 
and in trust we are to learn to be still, and 
know that he is God. 

22. 

SORROW. 

We glory in tribulations also ; knowing that tribula- 
tion worketh patience ; and patience, experience ; and 
experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed. — Rom. 
V, 3-5. 

THE inner mind, wrapped up, as it seems, 
by impenetrable defenses, is yet more 
exposed to shocks and wounds than the 
outer skin tissue. The more emphatically 
you are the son of man with human nature 
in its perfection in you, the more exquis- 
itely can your feelings bleed. That which 
a base and craven spirit smiles at is torture 
to the noblest and the best. It was for this 
reason that Christ was in a peculiar sense 
the **Man of sorrows.*' Things which rough 
and scornful men would have shaken from 
them without feeling went home sharp and 
deep into his gentle and loving heart. ** Be- 
hold, and see if there be any sorrow like 
unto my sorrow." 



196 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. 23. 

23. 

THE SANCTIFYING POWER OF SORROW. 

This I say, brethren, the time is short : it remaineth, 
that . . . they that weep be as though they wept not ; and 
they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not ; and they 
that buy, as though they possessed not. — I Cor. vii, 29, 30. 

'* A S though they wept not ; " that is as 
^^ though God had already removed their 
grief. Else, in this world of sorrow and dis- 
tress, how should we escape despair ? Famil- 
iarity with eternal things subdues grief, calms 
and softens it, gives it a true perspective. 

It is only in afflictions borne for Christ's 
sake — that is, in Christ's name and with Christ's 
spirit — that we can rejoice. . . . And observe, 
it is specially the humble, womanlike, passive 
side of endurance, the courage of patience, 
that is the peculiarity of the Cross. 

24. 

THE FUNCTION OF SORROW. 
The God of all grace, who hath called us unto his 
eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered 
a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. 
— I Peter v, 10. 

THE simplest and most obvious use of sor- 
row is to remind of God. Jairus and the 
woman, like many others, came to Christ from 
a sense of want. It would seem that a certain 



Au^. 25.] SYMPATHY. 197 



shock is needed to bring us in contact with 
reality. We are not conscious of our breathing 
till obstruction makes it felt. We are not aware 
of the possession of a heart until some disease, 
some sudden joy or sorrow, rouses it into ex- 
traordinary action. And we are not conscious 
of the mighty cravings of our half divine hu- 
manity, we are not aware of the God within us, 
till some chasm yawns which must be filled. 

The account of life which represents it as 
probation is inadequate. The truest account of 
this mysterious existence seems to be that it is 
intended for the development of the soul's life, 
for which sorrow is indispensable. Every son of 
man who would attain the true end of his being 
must be baptized with fire. It is the law of our 
humanity that we must be perfected through 
suffering. 

SYMPATHY. 
Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion 
one of another ; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous. 
—I Peter iii, 8. 

THE perfect One gave sympathy and w^anted 
it. Gave it, as every page will show ; 
wanted it — " Could ye not watch with me ? " 
"Will ye also go away?" Found it in John 
and Martha and Mary and Lazarus. 



198 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Aug. 26. 

There is not a natural throb which ever 

agitated the bosom of humanity which Christ 

has not felt. 

26. 

HIDING OUR FACE FROM JESUS. 

The poor shall never cease out of the land : therefore, 
I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand 
wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in 
thy land. — Deut. xv, ii. 

WE hide our face from the " Man of sor- 
rows " when we forget that we are sent 
into this world to relieve misery; . . . *Svant 
of thought," that is the sin of those who go 
through life, not suspecting, and not caring 
to inquire how much there is of human des- 
olation. 

27. 

BROTHERHOOD. 

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neigh- 
bor unto him that fell among thieves? And he said. He 
that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, 
Go, and do thou likewise. — Luke x, 36, 37. 

OUR tendencies to evil, our capacities of 
excellence are the same in all classes. 
It is just in proportion as men recognize this 
real, original identity of all human nature 
that it is possible on this earth to attain the 
realization of human brotherhood. 



Aug. 29.] THE POOR, 199 



28. 

THE BEGGAR. 

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was 
carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. — Luke 
xvi, 22. 

THAT wretched beggar that holds his hat 
at the crossing of the street is God's child 
as well as you, if he only knew it. You know 
it, he does not — that is the difference. 

29. 

THE POOR. 

Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen 
the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the king- 
dom which he hath promised to them that love him ? — 
James ii, 5. 

TO feel with the poor we must understand 
them first. Don't think it always neces- 
sary to go with your purse or your advice. 
"Visit " as a friend. 

Woe to us in the great day of God, if we 
have been the sycophants of the rich instead 
of the redressers of the poor man's wrongs — 
woe to us if we have been tutoring David into 
respect to his superior, Nabal, and forgotten 
that David's case, not Nabal's, is the cause of 
God. 



200 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Aug. 30. 

30. 

THE MIDDLE CLASS. 
He said unto ihem, Take heed, and beware of covet- 
ousness : for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things which he possesseth. — Luke xii, 15. 

THE middle classes already have every real 
enjo5^ment which the wealthiest can have. 
The only thing they have not is the ostentation 
of the means of enjoyment. More would en- 
able them to multiply equipages, houses, books. 
It could not enable them to enjoy them more. 

31. 

WOULD YOU BE RICH? 
These are they which are sown among thorns ; such 
as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the 
deceitfulness of riches, . . . entering in, choke the word, 
and it becometh unfruitful. — Mark iv, 18, 19. 

NOT what a man has, but what he is, ihat^ 
through time and through eternity, is his 
real and proper life. ... If you will be rich you 
must be content to pay the price of falling into 
temptation and a snare, and many foolish and 
hurtful lusts which drown men in perdition; 
and if that price be too high to pay, then you 
must be content with the quiet valleys of exist- 
ence, where alone it is well with us— kept out of 
the inheritance, but having instead God for 
your portion. 




TBMBEI^, 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



SEPT. 

The Gentleman of the World i 

The Christian Gentleman 2 

Politeness 3 

Philanthropy. . 4 

Giving 5 

Stewards 6 

Servitude 7 

Failure 8 

Mistakes 9 

Doubts of Christians 10 

Complaining . 1 1 

Despondency 12 

The Valley of the Shadov^^ of Death 13 

Encouragement 14 

Your Pledge to God 15 

Try Again 16 

Overcoming 17 

Obedience 18 

Fearlessly Do Right 19 

Spiritual Strength 20 

Belief 21 

Duty 22 

Sacrifices 23 

That Which Remains of the Afflictions of Christ. 24 

Progress 25 

Work Out Your Own Salvation 26 

Work 27 

Deeds 28 

Like Christ 29 

How to Become Like Christ 30 



Sept. I.] GENTLEMAN OF THE WORLD, 203 

1. 

THE GENTLEMAN OF THE WORLD. 
If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect 
man, and able also to bridle the whole body. — James iii, 2. 

A WELL-BRED person with every emotion 
under control, with features immovable — 
we are as sure of meeting consideration from 
him as if he were influenced by the Gospel. 
Yet all this bland courtesy is on the outside. 

A high-bred man never forgets himself, con- 
trols his temper, does nothing in excess, is 
urbane, dignified, and that even to persons 
whom he is inwardly wishing far away. 

The more refined and courteous a man is the 
more he will avoid in conversation a direct men- 
tion of himself. 

2. 

THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 
Charity suffereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth 
not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puff"ed up, doth not 
behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily 
provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all 
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity 
never faileth. — i Cor. xiii, 4-8. Also the whole of 
Rom. xii. 

A CHRISTIAN is what the gentleman of 
-**- the world seems to be. Love gives him 
a delicate tact which never offends, because it 



204 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept. 3. 

is full of sympathy. It discerns far off what 
would hurt fastidious feelings, feels with others, 
and is ever on the watch to anticipate their 
thoughts. And hence the only true refine- 
ment comes from Christian love. 

You may be affable and yet have a sacred 
spell of dignity around you that none would 
wish to break through. Was the Godhead 
lowered by condescension ? ... So with us. 
Haughtiness and reserve leave the heart 
barren; condescension is the true dignity of 
man. 

3. 

POLITENESS. 

I PLEASE all men in all things, not seeking mine own 
profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved. — 
I Cor. X, 33. 

THAT politeness which springs sponta- 
neously from the heart, the desire to put 
others at their ease, to save the stranger from 
a sensation of awkwardness, to soothe the 
feeling of inferiority — that, ennobled as it is by 
love, mounts to the high character of a heav- 
enly grace. 



Sept. 4.] PHILANTHROPY. 205 

4. 

PHILANTHROPY. 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may 
see your good works, and glorify your Father which is 
in heaven. — Matt, v, 16. 

PHILANTHROPY ! It is a dream without 
Christ. Why should I love the Negro or the 
foreigner ? You can give no reason except an 
opinion. Why should I not be as exclusive as I 
please, and shrink from other nations and keep 
up national hatred 1 Well, in reply to that, . . .we 
are one in Christ — one family. Human blessed- 
ness is impossible except through union one 
with another. But union is impossible except 
in God. This was the truth taught by the 
showbread piled upon the altar. Each loaf 
was offered for, and represented a tribe; and 
the whole twelve, with different characteristics 
and various interests, were yet one in God, and 
therefore one with each other. 



206 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept. 5. 

6. 

GIVING. 

Every man shall give as he is able, according to the 
blessing of the Lord thy God which he hath given thee. 
— Deut. xvi, 17. 

[Compare Deut. xvi, 10 and 17, with i Cor. xvi, 2, 
and 2 Cor. ix, 7.] 

MEN do not give as God hath prospered 
them, because they do not give system- 
atically ; that is, they who have most are not 
they who give most, but the reverse. It is a 
fact, the more we have the less we give. 

It is not the value of the contribution, but 
the love of the contributor which makes it 
precious. The offering is sanctified or made 
unholy in God's sight by the spirit in which it 
is given. 

Often the highest charity is simply to pay 

liberally for all things done for you ; because 

to underpay workmen, and then be bountiful, 

is not charity. 

6, 

STEWARDS. 
It is required in stewards, that a man be found faith- 
ful. — I Cor iv, 2. 

ALL that a steward can have of merit is fidel- 
ity, and fidelity is exactly that which men 
cannot judge — it is a secret hidden with God. 



Sept. 7.] SERVITUDE, 207 

7. 

SERVITUDE. 

Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before 
Ihree, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : 
make me as one of thy hired servants. — Luke xv, i8, 19. 

AFTER a life of wild sinfulness religion is 
servitude at first, not freedom. Observe, 
he went back to duty with the feeling of a 
slave. Anyone who has lived in the excite- 
ment of the world, and then tried to settle 
down at once to quiet duty knows how that is. 

The first step in spirituality is to get a dis- 
taste for common duties. . . . But the last and 
highest step in spirituality is made in feeling 
these common duties again to be divine and 
holy. This is the true liberty of Christ when 
a free man binds himself in love to duty. 
Not in shrinking from our distasteful occupa- 
tions, but in fulfilling them, do we realize our 
high origin. 

God only notices the love, the adoration, 
the service we show to his dear Son. 



208 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept, 8. 

8. 

FAILURE. 

Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, work- 
eth for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory. — 2 Cor. iv, 17. 

IT has been observed of the holy men of 
Scripture that their most signal failures 
took place in those points of character for 
which they were remarkable in excellence. 
Moses was the meekest of men. but it was 
Moses who "spake unadvisedly with his lips.'* 
St. John was the apostle of charity ; yet he is 
the very type to us of religious intolerance, in 
his desire to call down fire from heaven. 

Work, true work, done honestly and man- 
fully for Christ never can be a failure. Leave 
eternity to show that it has not been in vain in 
the Lord. 

9. 

MISTAKES. 

There is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to 
law one with another. Why do ye not rather take 
wrong ? Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be de- 
frauded? — I Cor. vi, 7. 

WHAT we are and where we are is God's 
providential arrangement, God*s doing, 
though it may be man's misdoing; and the 



Sept. lo.] DOUBTS OF CHRISTIANS. 209 



manly and the wise way is to look your disad- 
vantages in the face, and see what can be made 
out of them. Life, like war, is a series of mis- 
takes, and he is not the best Christian nor the 
best general who makes the fewest false steps ; 
but he is the best who wins the most splendid 
victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget 
mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes. 

10. 

DOUBTS OF CHRISTIANS. 

The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and 
saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sin of the world. — John i, 29. 

John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them 
to Jesus, saying. Art thou he that should come? or look 
we for another? — Luke vii, 19. 

DOUBT often comes from inactivity. We 
cannot give the philosophy of it, but 
this is the fact. Christians who have nothing 
to do, but sit thinking of themselves, meditat- 
ing, sentimentalizing, are almost sure to be- 
come the prey of dark, black misgivings. 

By idleness, by neglected prayer, we lose 
our power of realizing things not seen. . . . 
Doubts can only be dispelled by that kind of 

active life that realizes Christ, 
14 



310 THOUGHTS OxY GOD AND MAN, [Sept. ii. 

11. 

COMPLAINING. 
Be still, and know that I am God. — Psalm xlvi, lo. 

1\ A Y firm conviction is that denunciation 
^ ' *- does no good. Anathemas, whether 
thundered from church courts, from pulpits, or 
from platforms, are foolish and impotent. It 
is the principle of that book, the spirit of 
which I desire for my guide throughout life, 
that the wrath of man worketh not the right- 
eousness of God. 

12. 
DESPONDENCY. 

There came a voice unto him, and said, What do- 
est thou here, Elijah ? . . , Go, return on thy way. — 
Kings xix, 13, 15. 

"\17HAT doest thou here.? '*— here, in this 
V V short life. There is work to be done, 
evil put down, God's Church purified, good 
men encouraged, doubting men directed, a 
country to be saved, time going, life a dream, 
eternity long, one chance, and but one forever. 
'* What doest thou here } Arise, go on thy way." 
Fill up every hour, leave no crevice or craving 
for a remorse or a repentance to creep through 
afterward. Let not the mind brood on self; 
save it from speculation. 



Sept. 14.] ENCOURAGEMENT. 211 

13. 

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.* 
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art 
thou disquieted in me? hope thoirin God : for I shall yet 
praise him for the help of his countenance. — Psalm xlii, 5. 

THERE is a grief worse than lack of bread 
or loss of friends. Men in former times 
called it spiritual desertion. . . . This feeling 
of forsakenness is no proof of being forsaken. 
Mourning after an absent God is an evidence 
of love as strong as rejoicing in a present one. 
. . . Distinguish between the feeling of faith 
that God is present and the hope of faith that 
he will be so. No effort can make you feel; 
then you hope. There has been one at least 
whose apparent forsakenness and whose seem- 
ing doubt bears the stamp of the majesty of 
faith. *' My God, my God, why hast thou 

forsaken me ? '* 

14. 

ENCOURAGEMENT. 
Let us not be weary in welldoing, for in due season 
we shall reap, if we faint not. — Gal. vi, 9. 

SAINT PAUL is not speaking of doctrine, 
but of life [i Cor. iv, 7-21]. He declares 
the life of suffering, of hardship in the cause 

* '' Valley of the Shadow of Death " does not mean death of body. 
In PilgriTfCs Progress Christian passed through the valley years 
before he came to the river of Death, 



212 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Sept. 15. 

of duty, to be higher than the life of popu- 
larity and self-indulgence. He says that the 
majesty of a man consists ... in this, in being 
not superhuman, but human ; in being through 
and through a man, according to the divine 
idea ; a man whose chief privilege it is to be 
a minister — that is, a servant, a follower of 
Him who *' came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom 
for many/* 

15. 
YOUR PLEDGE TO GOD. , 

That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep 
and perform ; even a freewill offering, according as 
thou hast vowed unto the Lord thy God, which thou 
hast promised with thy mouth. — Deut. xxiii, 23. 

YOU cannot, in the courts of heaven, dis- 
tinguish between an oath to God and a 
word pledged to man. 

16. 

TRY AGAIN. 

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; we 
are perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, but not 
forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed. — 2 Cor. iv, 8, 9. 

A CHRISTIAN ought to feel always that 
he has partially failed, but that ought 
not to be the only feeling. Faith ought ever 



Sept. 17.] OVERCOMING. 213 

to be a sanguine, cheerful thing ; and perhaps 
in practical life we could not give a better 
account of faith than by saying that it is, 
amid much failure, having the heart to try 
again. Our best deeds are marked by im- 
perfection, but if they really were our best, 
** forgetting the things that are behind," we 
shall do better next time. 

17. 

OVERCOMING. 

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not 
fulfill the lust of the flesh. — Gal. v, 16. 

1WILL quote a passage which has struck 
me : " The true art of moral culture is to 
balance extravagant tendencies by quickening 
those which are languid. Growth is a safer 
means of producing harmony in character than 
repression." You cannot descend to the 
regions of the lower nature and wrestle with 
success there. You must go alone and fight 
them, as Perseus fought the dragon that would 
have destroyed Andromeda, on wings in the 
air. 



214 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept. i8. 

18. 

OBEDIENCE. 

Behold, to obey is bettei than sacrifice, and to 
hearken than the fat of rams. — i Sam. xv, 22. 

IT has been well remarked, It is not said 
that after keeping God's commandments, 
but in keeping them, there is great reward. 
God has linked these two things together, and 
no man can separate them — obedience and 

peace, 

19. 

FEARLESSLY DO RIGHT. 

Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great 
plainness of speech. — 2 Cor. iii, 12. 

BE sure that straight-forwardness is more 
than a match at last for all the involved 
windings of deceit. In your daily life do what 
you feel right, say what you feel true, and 
leave, with faith and boldness, the conse- 
quences to God. 

20. 

SPIRITUAL STRENGTH. 

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee : 
for my strength is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Cor. xii, 9. 

SPIRITUAL strength consists of two things 
— power of wall and power of self-re- 
straint. It requires two things, therefore, for 



Sept. 21.] BELIEF, 215 

its existence — strong feelings and strong com- 
mand over them. . . . He who with strong 
passions remains chaste, he who, keenly sensi- 
tive, with manly power of indignation in him, 
can be provoked and yet refrain himself and 
forgive — these are strongmen, spiritual heroes. 

21. 

BELIEF. 

Jesus said unto him, If tliou canst believe, all things 
are possible to him that believeth. — Mark ix, 23. 

THE man who tries to discover a god out- 
side of himself instead of within, is doing 
just like him who endeavors to find out the 
place of the rainbow by hunting for it. You 
must be pure before you can believe in purity ; 
generous, before you can believe in unselfish- 
ness. In all moral truth what you are that is 
the condition of your belief. Only to him in 
whom infinite aspirations stir can an infinite 
One be proved. 

Belief is power. Only so far as a man be- 
lieves strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, 
or do anything that is worth the doing. 



216 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept. 22. 



DUTY. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : Fear 
. God, and keep his commandments : for this is the whole 
duty of man. — Eccles. xii, 13. 

r 

NOR do I ever expect to find the line of 
duty — lying as it does, up the hill, with 
the cross at the top — a pleasant path. 

It is good to be honest, to pay one's debts, 
but when you are simply doing your duty do 
not talk of a noble life. The duty that lies 
immediately before a man ; let him bend him- 
self anxiously and earnestly to that. But as 
he values peace, let him not look at self. 

Do the duty next you ; leave the rest to de- 
velop itself. 

23. 

SACRIFICES. 

My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt 
offering. — Gen. xxii, 8. 

THE Christian sacrifice is the surrender of 
the will, the surrender of ourselves. AVhen 
all the will has been submitted then God 
says, " Now I know that thou fearest God, see- 
ing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only 
son from me." . . . We need not seek for sac- 
rifices. We need not be anxious to find a 



Sept. 24.] AFFLICTIONS OF CHRIST. 21 



rf 



cross. . . . Plenty will occur every hour and 
moment by God's appointment, better than any 
devised by you. God will provide himself a 
lamb for a burnt offering. 

24. 

THAT WHICH REMAINS OF THE AFFLICTIONS 

OF CHRIST. 

I REJOICE ill my sufferings for your sake, and fill up 
on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of 
Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the 
church. — Col. i, 24. [Rev. Ver.] 

WAS there something behindhand of Christ's 
sufferings remaining uncompleted, of 
which the sufferings of Paul could be in any 
sense the completement ? He says there was. 
Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church 
in any form of correct expression be said to 
eke out the sufferings that were incomplete "^ 
In one sense it is true to say that there is one 
offering once offered y"<^r all. But it is equally 
true to say that that one offering is valueless, 
except so far as it is completed and repeated 
in the life and self-offering of all. . . . The 
sacrifice of Christ is done over again in every 
life which is lived not to self, but to God. 



218 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept. 25. 

25. 

PROGRESS. 

Speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into 
him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. — Eph. 
iv, 15. 

NO man ever progressed to greatness and 
goodness but through great mistakes. 
It is the work of a long life to become a 
Christian. Many, O many a time are we 
tempted to say, " I make no progress at all. It 
is only failure after failure." Now look at the 
sea when the flood is coming in. Go and 
stand by the seabeach, and you will think 
that the careless flux and reflux is but retro- 
gression equal to the advance. But look again 
in an hour's time, and the whole ocean has ad- 
vanced. Every advance has been beyond the 
last, and every retrograde movement has been 
an imperceptible trifle less than the last. This 
is progress to be estimated at the end of hours 
not minutes. And this is Christia?i progress. 
. . . Every advance is a real gain, and part of 
it is never lost. Both when we advance and 
when we fail we gain. The flood of spirit life 
has carried us up higher on the everlasting 
shore where ... all is safe at last. 



Sept. 27.] WORK. 219 

26. 

WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION. 

Work out your own salvation with fear and trem- 
bling ; for it is God which worketh in you both to will 
and to do of his good pleasure. — Phil, ii, 12, 13. 

IT is not, Work in order to be saved ; but, 
Because you are saved. It is not, Labor 
that you may be accepted ; but, Labor because 
you are accepted. Ye are sons of God ; here 
are God's promises, therefore become what 
you are reckoned to be; let the righteousness 
which is imputed to you become righteousness 
/;/ you. ** Ye are the temple of God; *' cleanse 

yourself. 

27. 

WORK. 

Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
will of my Father which is in heaven, — Matt, vii, 21. 

nPHE love of goodness is real and healthy 
^ only when we do it. 
The spiritual life is not knowing, nor hear- 
ing, but doing. We only know so far as we 
can do ; we learn to do by doing ; what we 
do truly, rightly, in the way of duty, that, and 
only that, we are. 



220 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Sept. 28. 

No man ever lived whose acts were not 
smaller than himself. 

Labor brings out strength of character. A 
world where all w^as rest would make the 
human race degraded. 

28. 

DEEDS. 

I HEARD a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, 
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from hence- 
forth : Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 
their labors ; and their works do follow them. — Rev. 
xiv, 13. 

WHAT you have done lasts — lasts in you. 
Through ages, through eternity, what 
you have done for Christ, that, and only that, 
you are. " They rest from their labors," saith 
the Spirit, ^* and their works do follow them." 
" What I have written I have written.** 
For deeds are permanent and irrevocable ; 
that which you have written on life is forever. 
You cannot rub it out; there it is forever: 
your epistle to the world and to the everlasting 
ages ^' to be known and read of all men." 
This is it which makes life so all-important. 
O, then, take care what you write, for you can 
never unwrite it again. 



Sept. 30.] now TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST. 221 

29. 

LIKE CHRIST. 

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffer- 
ing, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. 
— Gal. V, 22, 23. 

MAN resembles God ; all spirits, all minds, 
are of the same family. The Father 
bears a likeness to the Son whom he has 
created. The mind of God is similar to the 
mind of man. Love does not mean one thing 
in man and another thing in God. Holiness, 
justice, pity, tenderness, these are in the Eternal 
the same in kind which they are in the finite. 
The present manhood of Christ conveys this 
deeply important truth, that the divine heart 
is human in its sympathies. 

30. 

HOW TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST. 
If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none 
of his. — Rom. viii, 9. 

THE truer you are, the humbler, the nobler, 
the more you will feel Christ to be your 
King. 

It is not by saying Christ's words or by 
doing Christ's acts, but it is by breathing his 
spirit that w^e become like him. 



OGiPOBBr^. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



OCT. 

Law I 

Free From the Law 2 

Christian Freedom 3 

An Oath , 4 

Gifts 5 

Grace 6 

Faith , 7 

Saving Faith 8 

Faith that is Dead 9 

Trust 10 

Virtue 11 

Chastity . 12 

Tongues 13 

Tongues May Be Understood 14 

Prophecy 15 

What is Truth ? 16 

To Witness to the Truth 17 

Truthfulness and Veracity 18 

Spiritual Wisdom ig 

Reverence 20 

Affection 21 

Sensitiveness 22 

The Object of Love 23 

Love of the World 24 

Love of Parents 25 

Love of God 26 

Charity 27 

Modesty 28 

Meekness 29 

Righteousness 30 

Unworldliness <?! 



Oct. I.] LAW, 225 

1. 

LAW. 

All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this ; 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. — Gal. v, 14. 

ACCORDING to Paul, what the law does is 
to exasperate sin into greater activity : 
'* I had not known sin but by the law." All 
that law can do is to manifest sin, just as the 
dam thrown against the river shows its strength ; 
law can arrest sometimes the commission of 
sin, but never the inward principle. 

The moral laws of this universe are as im- 
mutable as God himself. God cannot alter 
those laws : he cannot make wrong right. He 
cannot make truth falsehood, nor falsehood 
truth. Law moves on its majestic course ir- 
resistible. If his chosen son violates law and 
throws himself from the pinnacle he dies. 

2. 

FREE FROM THE LAW. 

The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, 
that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith 
is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. — Gal. 
iii, 24, 25. 

WHEN we say that a Christian is free from 
the law, we do not mean that he may 

break it or not as he likes. We mean that 
15 



226 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Oct. 3. 

he is bound to do right by a nobler tie than 
you must. 

For whom is law necessary, and how long is 
it necessary for them ? It is necessary for 
those who feel the inclination to evil; and so 
long as the inclination remains, so far must a 
man be under law. 

3. 

CHRISTIAN FREEDOM. 

Ye shall knovv^ the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free. — John viii, 32. 

CHRISTIAN liberty is internal. It resides 
in the deeps of the soul; a soul freed by 
faith is safe from superstitions. He who fears 
God will fear nothing else. . . . He alone is 
free who can use outward things with con- 
scientious freedom as circumstances vary. 

4. 

AN OATH. 

Let your communication be, Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : 
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. — Matt. 
V, 37. 

THE third commandment is commonly 
quoted as prohibiting blasphemy and 
cursing ; but originally it had nothing to do 
with this, To take the name of God in vain 



Oct. 5.] GIFTS. 227 

was to use it in asseveration, to call God to 
witness; and then, by breaking the oath, to 
make that invocation vain or void, and then 
render the name of God a worthless and friv- 
olous thing. . . . Under the Jewish law, if a 
man was put upon his oath by the priest, he 
was bound to utter truth, under tremendous 
penalties. ... It was in obedience to this 
law that Christ responded to the high priest's 
question. At first he held his peace, but when 
** adjured by the living God *' to say if he were 
the Son of God, he immediately replied, ** I 
am." 

GIFTS. 

Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts. — i 
Cor. xiv, I. 

A GIFT is that in which our main strength 
lies. 
The apostle bids the Corinthians undervalue 
gifts in comparison with graces : as gifts are 
not ourselves, but our accidents, like property, 
ancestors, birth, or position in the world. 



228 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Oct. 6. 

6. 

GRACE. 

God is able to make all grace abound toward you ; 
that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may 
abound to every good work. — 2 Cor. ix, 8. 

A GRACE is that which has in it some 
moral quality; whereas a gift does not 
necessarily share in this. . . . Graces are 
what a man is; but enumerate his gifts, and 
you will only know what he has, 

7. 

FAITH. 

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the 
evidence of things not seen. — Heb. xi, i. 

FAITH is the conviction, *'What I do thou 
knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
hereafter." Faith is trust — in the midst of the 
perplexities of evil to feel sure that all is right, 
to believe that partial evil is universal good. 

Faith is trust. Trust is dependence on an- 
other ; the spirit which is opposite to inde- 
pendence or trust in self. Hence, where the 
spirit of proud independence is, faith is not. 

It matters not hoiv faith comes, whether 
through the heart, as in the case of John, or 
through the intellect, as in the case of Thomas, 



Oct. 8.] SAVING FAITH. 229 

or as the result of long education, as in the 
case of Peter, . . . that blessed thing which 
the Bible calls faith is a state of the soul. 

The///>is the test of faith. Faith produces 
faith. If you want to convince men, and ask 
how you shall do it, we reply. Believe with all 
your heart and soul, and some soul will be 
surely kindled by your flame. 

8. 

SAVING FAITH. 

The eunuch said, See, here is water ; what doth 
hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou 
believest w^ith all thine heart, thou mayest. And he 
answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son 
of God. — Acts viii, 36, 37. 

PAUL says, Works, mere acts, are not 
enough to justify us, because they are 
limited and imperfect. Ten thousand, a 
million, cannot, because even a million is a 
limited number. Nothing justifies but faith, 
for faith is infinite and immeasurable like a 
fountain. True, replies James. But then do 
not think that Paul means to say that a living 
fount of faith will be barren without works. 
The faith which saves is " a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life." 



230 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Oct. 9. 

9. 

FAITH THAT IS DEAD. 
Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. — 
James ii, 17. 

SUPPOSE I say, *' A tree cannot be struck 
without thunder ; " that is true, for there 
is never destructive lightning without thunder. 
But again, if I say, " The tree was struck by 
lightning without thunder," that is true, too, if 
I mean that the lightning alone struck the tree, 
without the thunder striking it. Yet read the 
two assertions together, and they seem contra- 
dictory. So in the same way Paul says, ** Faith 
justifies without works," that is, faith ^///y is that 
which justifies us, not works. But James says, 
"Not a faith which is without works." There 
will be works with faith, as there is thunder with 
lightning. . . . Put it in one sentence: Faith 
alone justifies; but not the faith which is alone. . . . 
The life of God in the soul must spring up with 
acts; for to say that it does not would be to say 

that it is dead. 

10. 

TRUST. 
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; 
and he knovveth them that trust in him. — Nahum i, 7. 

TT is not hcVitf about Christ, but personal trust 
^ in the Christ of God that saves the soul. 



Oct. i2.j CHASTITY. 231 

1 1. 

VIRTUE. 
Unto the pure all things are pure. — Titus i, 15. 

IT is a foolish question to ask, Will the 
true, pure, loving, holy man be saved ? 
He is saved ; he has heaven ; it is in him 
now — an earnest of more hereafter. 

12. 

CHASTITY. 

Who can find a virtuous woman ? for her price is 
far above rubies. — Prov. xxxi, 10. 

THERE was a fire in Rome called eternal, 
forever replenished. It was the type and 
symbol of the duration of the republic. This 
fire was tended by the vestals — a beautifully 
significant institution. It implied that the 
duration of Rome was coextensive with the 
preservation of her purity of morals. So long 
as the dignity of her matrons and her virgins 
remained unsullied, so long she would last; 
no longer. Female chastity guarded the 
Eternal City. . . . The Roman was conspicu- 
ous for the virtues of this earth — honor, fidelity, 
courage, chastity, all manliness. 



232 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Oct. 13. 

13. 

TONGUES. 

I THANK my God, I speak with tongues more than 
ye all : Yet in the church I had rather speak five words 
with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach 
others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown 
tongue. — I Cor. xiv, 18, 19. 

WE gather first that the " tongues " were 
inarticulate or incoherent. Man spoke 
^*not unto men, but unto God.*' What is this 
but that rapt, ecstatic outpouring of unutter- 
able feeling, for which language is insufficient 
and poor, in which a man is not trying to 
make himself logically clear to men, but pour- 
ing out his soul to God 1 

Again, in i Cor. xiv, 4 : ** He that speaketh 
in an unknown tongue edifieth himself.** Here 
we find that this gift is something internal, a 
kind of inspired and impassioned soliloquy, or 
it may be meditation uttered aloud. . . . 
Once again, in the seventh and eighth verses, 
. . . the apostle proceeds to compare the gifts 
of tongues with the unworded and inarticulate 
sounds of musical instruments. These have a 
meaning. Paul does not say they have none, 
but he says that, not being definite, they are 



Oct. 14.] TONGUES MAY BE UNDERSTOOD. 233 

unintelligible, except to a person in sympathy 
with the same mood of feeling. . . . And 
although they have a meaning, it is one which 
h felt rather than measured by the intellect. 
. . . Lastly, let us consider the eleventh verse. 
. . . Here the gift is compared to a barbarian 
tongue, to a man speaking what the hearer 
knew not. Therefore we see that it is not a 
barbarian tongue itself which is here intended, 
but merely that the indefinable language 
uttered is likened to one. 

14. 

TONGUES MAY BE UNDERSTOOD. 

Let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray 
that he may interpret. — I Cor. xiv, 13. 

TT is a great principle that all the deeper 
^ feelings can only be comprehended by one 
who is in the same state of feeling as the per- 
son who utters or attempts to utter them. 
Sympathy is the only condition for interpreta- 
tion of feeling. . . . There must be ** music 
in the soul " as the condition of understand- 
ing harmony; to him who has not this, the 
language of music is simply unintelligible. 



284 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Oct. 15. 

15. 

PROPHECY. 

He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, 
and exhortation, and comfort. — i Cor. xiv, 3. 

IN these days, when we use the word prophet, 
we mean it almost always to signify a pre- 
dictor of future events. But in the Old Testa- 
ment it has this meaning only sometimes^ while 
in the New Testament generally it has not 
this interpretation. A prophet was one com- 
missioned to declare the will of God- — a 
revealer of truth ; it might be of facts future, 
or the far higher truth of the meaning of facts 
present. 

16. 

WHAT IS TRUTH? 

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and 
the life : no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 
— John xiv, 6. 

" 'T^O this end was I born, and for this cause 
^ came I into the world, that I should 
bear witness unto the truth.'* Truth is used 
here in a sense equivalent to reality ; for 
"truth" subatitute ".reality" and it will be- 
come more intelligible. 

The deep glances into truth are got by love. 



Oct. 17.] TO WITNESS TO THE TRUTH, 235 

Love a man ; that is the best way of under- 
standing him. Feel a truth ; that is the only- 
way of comprehending it. 

The way of reaching truth is by obeying the 
truth you know. '* If any man will do His 
will he shall know.** 

(See Pilate, April n.) 

17. 

TO WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I 
into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. — ^John xviii, 37. 

A MAN cannot create truth, he can only 
bear witness to it; he has no proud 
right of private judgment, he can only listen 
and report that which is in the universe. . . . 
Each man in his vocation is in the world to 
do this ; as truly as it was said by Christ may 
it be said by each of us, . . . *^ To this end 
was I born." 



A lady with whom he [Mr. Robertson] was 
slightly acquainted assailed him for " hetero- 
dox opinions," and menaced him with the con- 
sequence which in this world and the next 
would follow on the course of action he was 
pursuing. His only answer was. "I don't 



236 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Oct. i8. 

care/' *' Do you know what don't care came 
to, sir ? " ** Yes, madam," was the grave reply, 
*' He was crucified on Calvary." 

18. 

TRUTHFULNESS AND VERACITY. 

The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth 
came by Jesus Christ. — John i, 17. 

\ /ERACITY implies a correspondence be- 
^ tween words and thoughts ; truthfulness 
a correspondence between thoughts and reali- 
ties. To be veracious it is only necessary 
that a man give utterance to his convictions ; 
to be true, it is needful that his convictions 
have affinity with fact. ... If a man speak a 
careless slander against another, believing it, 
he has not sinned against veracity ; but the 
carelessness which led him into so grave an 
error effectually bars his claim to clear truth- 
fulness. 

19. 

SPIRITUAL WISDOM. 

The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart 
from evil is. understanding. — Job xxviii, 28. 

THE condition of spiritual wisdom and cer- 
tainty in truth is obedience to the will of 
God, surrender of private will. 



Oct. 21.] AFFECTION, 237 

Wisdom is of the heart rather than the 
intellect ; the harvest of moral thoughtfulness, 
patiently reaped in through years. Two things 
are required — earnestness and love. . . . The 
truth is, it is not the amount which is poured 
in that gives wisdom ; but the amount of 
creative mind and heart working on and stirred 
by what is poured in. 

20. 

REVERENCE. 
And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes 
from off ihy feet ; for the place whereon thou standest is 
holy ground. — Exod. iii, 5. 

YOU degrade that loneliness by your com- 
passion. Compassion ! Compassion for 
Him ! Adore if you will — respect and rever- 
ence that sublime solitariness with which none 
but the Father was — but no pity ; let it draw 
out the firmer and manlier graces of the soul. 
Even tender sympathy seems out of place. 

21. 

AFFECTION. 
Set your affection on things above, not on things on 
the earth. — Col. iii, 2. 

THE highest moment known on earth by the 
mere natural is that in which the myste- 
rious union of heart with heart is felt. Call it 



238 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Oct. 22. 

what you will — friendship — love — . . , Yet 
human love is but the faint type of that sur- 
passing blessedness which belongs to those who 
love God. 

Affections are never deepened and refined 
until the possibility of loss is felt. 

Those on whom our affections have been 
lavished pass away; they die, but behind 
them is left the unburied power of love ; and 
we find at last that we have been here in train- 
ing for the love that knows neither age nor 
sex nor individuality. 

22. 

ENSITIVENESS. 

Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my 
sorrow. — Lam. i, 12. 

WE wound men by our looks and our 
abrupt expressions without intending 
it ; because we have not been taught the 
delicacy and the tact and the gentleness which 
can only be learned by the wounding of our 
own sensibilities. 

I do not understand why the tenderer the 
heart is, the more it is exposed to be torn 
and rent and tortured. 



Oct. 24.] LOVE OF THE WORLD. 239 



23. 

THE OBJECT OF LOVE. 
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
Clod with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. 
— Matt, xxii, 37, 38. 

THE highest form of love is communion 
with God. Love excites the profound- 
est life of man, and each lower degree of love 
prepares the way for one which is higher. 
The love of God is the end of all, and I sup- 
pose that all must drop off, leaf by leaf, till that 

fruit is matured. 

24. 

LOVE OF THE WORLD. 
Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not 
thine heart be glad when he stumbleth. — Prov. xxiv, 17. 

IMPURE love is only a form of hate and cru- 
elty, and easily passes into them. There is 
nourishment enough in the ground for thorns, 
and enough for wheat ; but not enough in any 
ground for both wheat and thorns. The agricul- 
turist thins his nursery ground and the farmer 
weeds his fields, in order that the dissipated sap 
may be concentrated in a few plants vigorously. 
. . . Love dissipated on many objects concen- 
trates itself on none. God or the world — not 
both. 



240 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Oct. 25. 

26. 

LOVE OF PARENTS. 

Children, obey your parents in all things : for this 
is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not 
your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. — -Col. 
iii, 20, 21. 

T T is in vain for a man in his dying hour, who 
^ has loved no man individually, to attempt 
to love the human race ; everything here must 
be done by degrees. Love is a habit. God 
has given us the love of relatives and friends, 
the love of father and mother, brother, sister, 
friend, to prepare us gradually for the love of 
God. . . . The domestic affections are the 
alphabet of love. 

26. 

LOVE OF GOD. 

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, 
he it is that loveth me : and he that loveth me shall be 
loved of my P'ather, and I will love him, and will mani- 
fest myself to him. — John xiv, 21. 

GOD is a Character. To love God is to love 
his character. For instance, God is 
Purity. And to be pure in thought and look, 
to turn away from unhallowed books and 
conversation, to abhor the moment in which 
we have not been pure, is to love God. 



Oct. 27.] CHARITY, 241 

The love of God is the full-blown flower of 
which the love of man is the bud. To love 
man is to love God. To do good to man will 
be recognized hereafter as doing good to 
Christ. 

He has loved us, God knows why — I do 
not — and we all, unworthy though we be, 
respond faintly to that love, and try to be what 
he would have us. Therefore, come what may, 
hold fast to love. Though men should rend 
your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. 

27. 

CHARITY. 

Above all things have fervent charity among your- 
selves : for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. — 
I Peter iv, 8. 

CHxARTTY hides out of sight, and refuses 
to contemplate a multitude of sins which 
, malevolence would delight to see. It throws 
a veil over them and covers them. . . . There 
are three ways at least in which love covers 
sin: I. In refusing to see small faults. . . . 
2. By making large allowances. ... 3. Lastly, 
charity can tolerate even intolerance. 
16 



242 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Oct. 28. 

28. 

MODESTY. 

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta- 
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sin- 
ners ; of whom I am chief. — i Tim. i, 15. 

TRUE Christian modesty is not the being 
ignorant of what we are, neither does it 
consist in affecting ignorance. . . . If a man 
is falsely charged with theft, there is no van- 
ity in his indignantly asserting that he has 
been honest all his life long. Christian mod- 
esty consists rather in this — in having set be- 
fore us a sublime standard of what is right and 
great and pure and good, so that we feel how 
far we are from attaining to that. ... It is 
in placing before us ever the sublime, unap- 
proachable standard of Christ. 

Modesty is seldom the attribute of the un- 
tried. Modesty is a thing we learn generally 
by shame and failure. A young Christian is 
ambitious to distinguish himself as a saint at 
once. It is the aged saint who counts it an 
honor if he be permitted "with shame to take 
the lowest place," 



Oct. 30.] RIGHTEOUSNESS. 243 

29. 

MEEKNESS. 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls. — Matt, xi, 29. 

HUMBLENESS is peculiar to Christianity. 
Goodness is admired and taught in all 
religions. But to be good, and feel that your 
good is nothing ; to advance, and become more 
conscious of pollution ; to ripen in all excel- 
lence, and like corn to bend the head when 
full of ripe, bursting grain — that is Christianity. 

30. 

RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

If ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye : and 
be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. — 
I Peter iii, 14. 

DEAL righteousness, what is it.'* In one 
^^ word, it is surrender to the will of God. 
O, that I could breathe the spirit of Him who, 
when he was reviled, reviled not again ; when 
he suffered, threatened not ! For in his case 
all was undeserved ; but I cannot tell how 
much, in my case, rashness and pride have ir- 
ritated people, 



244 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Oct. 31. 

31. 

UNWORLDLINESS. 

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved 
what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy con- 
versation and godliness? — 2 Peter iii, 11. 

r TNWORLDLINESS is the spirit of hold- 
^ ing all things as not our own, in the 
perpetual conviction that they will not last. It 
is not to put life and God's lovely world aside 
with self-torturing hand. It is to have the 
world, and not to let the world have you; to 
be its master and not its slave. To have 
Christ hidden in the heart, calming all. 



nOYEMBEI^. 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



NOV. 

Forgetting Self i 

As God Sees Us , 2 

Germs of Evil 3 

Trials 4 

Thorn in the Flesh 5 

Our Great Want 6 

Dissatisfaction 7 

Unrest 8 

Struggling Up to God 9 

The Rest of the World 10 

The Rest of God , 11 

A Religious Life 12 

What is Sanctification ? 13 

Sanctification the Aim of Life 14 

What is Perfection ? 15 

Perfection the Christian's Aim 16 

Holiness 17 

The Holy of Llolies 18 

Visions 19 

Unutterable Things , . . . 20 

The Secret of the Lord 21 

Thoughts of God 22 

Thoughts of Heaven . , 23 

How to Overcome Evil Thoughts 24 

Reverie 25 

Meditation 26 

Joy ■ 27 

Peace, How Obtained 28 

Peace of God 29 

Hope 30 



Nov. I.] FORGETTING SELF. 247 



1. 

FORGETTING SELF. 
He must increase, but 1 must decrease. — John iii, 30. 

IN any work which is to live or be really beau- 
tiful there must be the spirit of the Cross. 
That which is to be a temple to God must never 
have the marble polluted with the name of the 
architect or builder. There can be no real suc- 
cess, except when a man has ceased to think of 

his own salvation. 

2. 

AS GOD SEES US. 
What is the thinfj that the Lord hath said unto thee ? 
I pray thee hide it not from me. — i Sam. iii, 17. 

I F we saw ourselves as God sees us, we should 
* be willing to be anywhere, to be silent when 
others speak, to be passed by in the world's 
crowd and thrust aside to make way for others. 
. . . This is the meek and quiet spirit, and this is 
the temper of the humble with whom the high 
and lofty One dwells. 

8. 
GERMS OF EVIL. 
If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the 
ungodly and the sinner appear ? — i Peter iv, 18. 

IN our best estate and in our purest moments 
there is a something of the devil in us, which, 
if it could be known, would make men shrink 
from us all. In our deepest degradation there 



248 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 4. 

remains something sacred, undefiled, the pledge 
and gift of our better nature; a germ of inde- 
structible life, like grains of wheat among the 
cerements of a mummy surviving through three 
thousand years, which viay be planted and live 

and grow again. 

4. 

TRIALS. 
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye 
shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. 
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the 
Spirit, which is the word of God. — Eph. vi, 16, 17. 

TRIALS do not become lighter as we go on. 
. . . What! no repose.'^ . . . No; harder 
and yet harder trials. For the Christian soldier 
there is no rest except in the grave. 

Let a man conquer, and fresh trials will open 
and fresh victories will ensue. Trials will assail 
us where we are most vulnerable. Everywhere, 
head and heart and heel. We must dismiss, 
therefore, the thought that we can ever put off 

the armor. 

5. 

THORN IN THE FLESH. 
He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee ; for 
my strength is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Cor. xii, 9. 

THERE is more than one person in this con- 
gregation who feels, as I am speaking, that 
he has a thorn. ... It may be indolence ; he may 



Nov. 7.] DISSATISFACTION. 249 

be haunted by dangerous reverie ; he may have 
evil thoughts tempting him continually to sin. 
My Christian brother, none knows but God how 
you have struggled with these thoughts, how 
you have battled with them on your knees, till 
they have seemed to rise up against you as a liv- 
ing, personal enemy. And yet take courage, my 
brother; be sure of this, His grace is sufficient 

for thee. 

6. 

OUR GREAT WANT. 
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so pant- 
eth my soul after thee, O God. — Psahii xlii, i. 

IF you search down into the constitution of 
* your being till you come to the lowest deep 
of all, underlying all other wants you will find a 
craving for what is infinite — a something that 
desires perfection, a wish that nothing but the 
thought of that which is eternal can satisfy. 

7. 

DISSATISFACTION. 

Ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done 

the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet 

a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will 

not tarry. — Heb. x, 36, 37. 

ONE reason, at least, why men pass through 
this world chafing, fretful, and dissatis- 
fied with their lot in life, is just this: they have 



250 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 8. 



formed an overweening estimate of self, and 
they find that neither God nor man treats 
them as they think they deserve. 

8. 

UNREST. 
O THAT I had wings Uke a dove ! for then would I 
fly away, and be at rest. — Psalm Iv, 6, 

A POND may be without a ripple ; as to the 
^~^ troubled sea, just because it is vast, it 
cannot rest. And so it is with the soul of 
man. It is its own magnificence that makes 
it intensely miserable. . . . Rest ! AVhy man's 
soul rocks and billows itself with an eternity 
beneath it. 

When we are content to stand, as it were, 
unclothed before God, without one claim upon 
him except the righteousness of Christ, there 
is one step made toward peace, and then our 
hot, swelling hearts may find rest. 

9. 

STRUGGLING UP TO GOD. 

And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless 
me. — Gen. xxxii, 26. 

TO get safe through to-morrow .'* No, no, 
no ! To be blessed by God — to know 
him, and what he is — that is the battle of 



Nov. 9.] STRUGGLING UP TO GOD. 251 

Jacob's soul from sunset till the dawn of day. 
And this is our struggle — the struggle. . . . 
Out of our frail and yet sublime humanity the 
demand that rises in the earthlier hours of our 
religion may be this, "Save my soul;" but in 
the most unearthly moments it is this, " Tell 
uie thy name." We move through a world of 
mystery, and the deepest question is, What is 
the being that is ever near, sometimes felt, 
never seen — that which has haunted us from 
childhood with a dream of something sur- 
passingly fair, which has never yet been real- 
ized — that which sweeps through the soul at 
times as a desolation, like the blast from the 
wings of the angel of death, leaving us stricken 
and silent in our loneliness — that which has 
touched us in our tenderest point, and the 
flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal 
affections have shriveled up with pain — that 
which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness ? 
Shall we say It or He "^ What is It ? Who is 
He ? Those anticipations of immortality and 
God, what are they ? . . . Shall I call them 
God, Father, Spirit, Love 1 A living being 
wnthin me or outside me ? Tell me thy name, 
thou awful mystery of Loveliness I This is the 
struggle of all earnest life. 



252 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. lo. 



lO. 

THE REST OF THE WORLD. 

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. — Matt, xi, 28. 

IF there was nothing else to make men 
* wretched, uncertainty respecting their 
future destinies would be enough. . . . There 
is no peace^ there is no rest in the prospect of 
eternity, unless there is something very much 
more than a guess that God is loving us. 

There is an eternal law that man cannot be 
happy except in keeping God's command- 
ments. 

1 1. 

THE REST OF GOD. 

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of 
God. — Heb. iv, 9. 

EXPERIENCE tells us, after a trial, that 
those Sundays are the happiest, the 
purest, the most rich in blessing, in which the 
spiritual part has been most attended to ; 
those in whicli, as in the temple of Solomon, 
the sound of the earthly hammer has not been 
heard in tlie temple of the soul. 

The world proposes a rest by the removal of 
a burden. The Redeemer gives rest by giv- 
ing us the spirit and power to bear the burden. 



Nov. 12.] A RELIGIOUS LIFE. 253 

Christ does not promise a rest of inaction, 
neither that the thorns shall be converted into 
roses, nor that the trials of life shall be 
removed. ... It is not the lake locked in ice 
that suggests repose, but the river moving on 
calmly and rapidly in silent majesty and 
strength. It is not the cattle lying in the sun, 
but the eagle cleaving the air with fixed 
pinions, that gives you the idea of repose 
combined with strength and motion. In crea- 
tion the rest of God is exhibited as a sense of 
power which nothing wearies. 

12. 

A RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? — 
Micah vi, 8. 

TO be religious is to feel that God is the 
Ever Near. It is to go through life with 
this thought coming instinctively and un- 
bidden, ^^ Thou God seest me." A life of 
religion is a life of faith ; and faith is that 
strange faculty by which man feels the pres- 
ence of the Invisible. 



254 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 13. 



13. 

WHAT IS SANCTIFICATION? 
For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also 
might be sanctified through the truth. — John xvii, ig. 

THE priest touched with the typical blood 
of a sacrificed animal the Levite's right 
hand, right eye, right foot. This was the 
Levite's sanctification. It devoted every fac- 
ulty and every power of seeing, doing, walk- 
ing, the right-hand faculties — the best and 
choicest — to God's peculiar service. 

" For their sakes I sanctify " — that is, devote 
— *^ myself." . . . This sanctification is spoken 
of here chiefly as threefold : Self-devotion by 
inward resolve, self-devotion to the truth, self- 
devotion for the sake of others. 

The true meaning of to " sanctify " is to set 
apart, and hence to consecrate to any work. 
Thus spoke Christ: "For their sakes I sanc- 
tify," set apart, devote *' myself." 

14. 

SANCTIFICATION THE AIM OF LIFE. 
This is the will of God, even your sanctification. — 
I Thess. iv, 3. 

IF we would be sanctified from the world 
-* when Christ comes we must be found, not 
stripping off the ornaments from our persons, 



Nov. 15.] WHAT IS PERFECTION? 255 

but the censoriousness from our tongues and 
the selfishness from our hearts. . . . He is 
sanctified who has, . . . in his Master's words, 
"a well of water in him, springing up into 
everlasting life,'* keeping his life on the whole 
pure, and his heart fresh. His true life is hid 
with Christ in God. His motives, the aims 
and objects of his life, however inconsistent 
they may be with each other, however irregu- 
larly or feebly carried out, are yet on the 
whole above, not here. His citizenship is in 

heaven. 

15. 

WHAT IS PERFECTION ? 

Not as though I had already attained, either were 
already perfect : but I follow after, if that I may appre- 
hend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ 
Jesus. — Phil, iii, 12. 

FAULTLESSNESS is conceivable, being 
merely the negation of evil. But perfec- 
tion is positive, the attainment of all conceiv- 
able excellence. It is as long as eternity — 
expansive as God. Perfection is our mark; 
yet, . . . even to the dying hour, it will be 
but this: "I count not myself to have appre- 
hended." 

The young ruler . . , asked for perfection; 



256 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. i6. 

''What lack I yet?" x\nd then there was 
nothing left but to say : " If thou wilt be per- 
fect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the 
poor, and come and follow me." For observe 
" strong meat " does not mean high doctrine, 
such as election, regeneration, justification by 
faith, but ** perfection " — strong demands on 
self, a severe, noble life. 

16. 

PERFECTION THE CHRISTIAN'S AIM. . 

Leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let 
us go on unto perfection. — Heb. vi, I. 

HAPPINESS is 7wt our being's end and 
aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, 
not happiness, and every one of the sons of 
God must have something of that spirit which 
marked their Master ; that holy sadness, that 
peculiar unrest, which belongs to a spirit 
which strives after heights to which it can 
never attain. 

Paul says, It is your nature not to sin ; you 
are not the child of the devil, but the child 
of God. 



Nov. i8.] THE HOLY OF HOLIES. 257 

17. 

HOLINESS 

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, 
what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy con- 
versation and godliness? — 2 Peter iii, ii. 

THE man of virtue walks in firmness, rest- 
ing on the law which he has fulfilled ; 
while the man of saintliness walks humbly, 
meekly, lowly, as beneath the infinite heaven 
of duty that arches overhead. 

Let the distinction be drawn between the 
•life of holiness and the life of mere blameless- 
ness. Blamelessnessand accuracy are beauti- 
ful to look upon, but they do not save the 
soul. 

Feel the powers of the world to come ; that 
is the secret of keeping oneself unspotted 
from the world. 

18. 

THE HOLY OF HOLIES. 
Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. — Psalm 

XXV, I. 

T^HE value of the public reading of the 
^ Psalms in our service is, that they express 
for us indirectly those deeper feelings which 
there would be a sense of indelicacy in ex- 
pressing directly. . . . There are feelings of 
17 



O.: 



58 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 19. 



which we do not speak to each other ; they 
are too sacred and too delicate. Such are 
most of our feelings to God. If we do speak 
of them, they lose their fragrance, become 
coarse; nay, there is even a sense of indeli- 
cacy and exposure. 

19. 

VISIONS. 

I WILL pour out my Spirit upon all flesh ; and your 
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men 
shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. — 
Joel ii, 28. 

/\ A ANY of Paul's visions were when he was 
* ' *• '* fasting,'* at times when the body is 
not predominant in our humanity. For *' full- 
ness of bread " and abundance of idleness are 
not the conditions in which we can see the 
things of God. Again, most of these revela- 
tions were made to him in the midst of trial. 
In prison at Philippi, during the shipwreck, 
while "the thorn was in his flesh," then it was 
the vision of unutterable things was granted 
to him, and the vision of God in his clearness 
came. This was the experience of Christ 
himself. God does not lavish his choicest 
gifts, but reserves them. . . . Yet, though in- 
spiration is granted in xX.^^ fullness only to rare, 



Nov. 20.] UNUTTERABLE THINGS, 259 

choice spirits like Paul, we must remember 
that ill degree it belongs to all Christian experi- 
ence. There have been moments, surely, in 
our experience, when the vision of God was 
clear. They were not, I will venture to say, 
moments of fullness or success or triumph. 
In some season of desertion, you have, in soli- 
tary longing, seen the sky ladder as Jacob saw 
of old, and felt heaven open even to you; or, 
in childish purity, heard a voice as Samuel 
did ; ... or, in prayer, you have been con- 
scious of more than earth present in the 
silence, and a hand in yours, and a voice that 
you could hear, and you could almost feel the 
eternal breath upon your brow. 

20. 

UNUTTERABLE THINGS. 

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have en- 
tered into the heart of man, the things which God hath 
prepared for them that love him. — i Cor. ii, 9. 

THERE are transfiguration moments, bridal 
hours of the soul; and not easily forgiven 
are those who would utter the secrets of its high 
intercourse with its Lord. There is a certain 
spiritual indelicacy in persons who cannot per- 
ceive that not everything which is a matter of 



260 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 21. 

experience and knowledge is therefore a sub- 
ject for conversation. You cannot discuss such 
subjects without vulgarizing them. The things 
of heaven are too high to be expressed in words 

of earth. 

21. 

THE SECRET OF THE LORD. 

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the 
hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in 
the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth 
saving he that receiveth it. — Rev. ii, 17. 

GOD dwells in the thick darkness. Silence 
knows more of him than speech. His 
name is secret ; therefore beware how you pro- 
fane his stillness. The secret of the Lord is with 
them that fear him, and is felt by dwelling with 
God, by thinking of God more than by talking 

of him. 

22. 

THOUGHTS OF GOD. 

And Jacob asked him, and said. Tell me, I pray 
thee, thy name. And he said. Wherefore is it that thou 
dost ask after my name ? And he blessed him there. — 
Gen. xxxii, 29. 

TO know all about God is one thing; to 
know the living God is another .... The 
name of God — feel him more and more — all 
else is but empty words. 



Nov. 23.] THOUGHTS OF HEAVEN. 261 

There is a Spirit which beareth witness with 
our spirits ; there is a '* Light which lighteth 
every man which cometh into the world." . . . 
The thought of your mind, perchance, is the 
thought of God. To refuse to follow //^^/may 
be to disown God. To take the judgment 
and conscience of other men to live by, where 
is the humility of that ? . . . Was the fountain 
from which they drew exhausted for you .i* 

23. 

THOUGHTS OF HEAVEN. 

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the 
moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God did lighten it, 
and the Lamb is the light thereof. — Rev. xxi, 23. 

HE who endeavors to be humble and holy 
and perfect, in order to win heaven, has 
only a counterfeit religion. God for his own 
sake — goodness because it is good ; truth 
because it is lovely — this is the Christianas 
aim. With this limitation, however, we re- 
mark that it is a Christian's duty to dwell 
much more on the thought of future blessed- 
ness than most men do. If ever the apostle's 
step began to flag, the radiant diadem be- 
fore him gave new vigor to his heart, and we 
know how at the close of his career the vision 



262 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 24. 

became more vivid. ** Henceforth there is laid 
up for me a crown of glory." It is our privi- 
lege, if we are on our way to God, to keep 
steadily before us the thought of home. Make 
it a matter of habit. Force yourself at night, 
alone, in the midst of the world's bright sights, 
to pause to think of the heaven w^hich is yours. 
Let it calm you and ennoble you, and give 
you cheerfulness to endure. 

24, 

HOW TO OVERCOME EVIL THOUGHTS. 

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any 
virtue, and if there be any jjraise, think on these things. 
—Phil, iv, 8. 

HOW shall we avoid evil thoughts? First, 
by the fear of God — an awful thought! 
a living God, infinitely pure, is conscious of 
your contaminated thoughts • . . . Love and 
hope will keep us strong against passion, as 
they kept our Saviour strong in suffering, 
^'who for the joy that was set before him, 
endured the cross, despising the shame." 
Secondly, by the promises of God. Think of 



Nov. 25.] REVERIE. 263 

what you are — a child of God, an heir of 
heaven. Realize the grandeur of saintliness, 
and you will shrink from degrading your soul 
and debasing your spirit. It is in reading saintly 
lives that we are ashamed of groveling desires. 
. . . Seek exercise and occupation, . . . com- 
mit to memory passages of Scripture. Let 
him store his mind with these as safeguards. 
Let these be to him the sword, turning every- 
where to keep the way of the Garden of Life 
from the intrusion of profaner footsteps. 

2B. 

REVERIE. 

He went out, and found others standing idle, and 
saith unto them. Why stand ye here all the day idle? — 
Matt. XX, 6. 

SOMETIMES we sit in a kind of day 
dream, the mind expatiating far away into 
vacancy, while minutes and hours slip by 
almost unmarked, in mere vacuity. This is not 
meditation, but reverie — a state to which the 
soul resigns itself in pure passivity. When 
the soul is absent and dreaming, let no man 
think that that is spiritual meditation, or any- 
thing that is spiritual. 



264 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 26. 

26. 

MEDITATION. 
When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate 
on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been 
my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I 
rejoice. My soul followeth hard after thee : thy right 
hand upholdeth me. — Psalm Ixiii, 6, 7, 8. 

MEDITATION is partly a passive, partly 
an active state. Whoever has pondered 
long over a plan which he is anxious to accom- 
plish, without distinctly seeing at first the way, 
knows what meditation is. . . . He knows 
what it is who has ever earnestly and sincerely 
loved one living human being. The image of 
his friend rises unbidden by day and night, 
. . . mixes its presence with his every plan. 
So far all is passive. But besides this he plans 
and contrives for that other's happiness. . . . 
This is meditation.- 

27. 

JOY. 

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy 
might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. — 
John XV, II. 

TF we sin we must be miserable; but if we 
^ be God's own that misery will not last 
long ; the evidence is lost only for a time, but 



Nov. 28.] PEACE, HOW OBTAINED. 2G5 

I do feel sure it is lost. But God's promise is 
so clear — " Sin shall not have dominion over 
you " — that the evidence must become bright 
again by victory. 

28. 

PEACE, HOW OBTAINED. 

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto 
you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let 
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 
— John xiv, 27. 

PEACE is that state in which there is no 
misery, no remorse, no sting. And there 
are but three things which can break that 
peace. The first is discord between the mind 
of man and the lot which he is called on to 
inherit ; the second is discord between the 
affections and powers of the soul ; and the 
third is doubt of the rectitude and justice and 
love wherewith this world is ordered. 

The man who has not peace in himself can- 
not get peace from circumstances. 

There is no thrill of pure peace ; that is im- 
possible to you, if only you have placed 
yourself in earnest under the discipline of 
Christ. 



266 Tff OUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Nov. 29. 



29. 
THE PEACE OF GOD. 

And lie said unto liim, Son, tliou art ever with me, 
and all that I have is thine. — Luke xv, 31. 

THE peace of men who have been religious 
from childhood is a verv different thino; 
from the keen luxury that attends the return of 
a prodigal son, but it is the best on the whole. 
It has more of heaven's deep tranquillity. It 
has more of childlike intimacy with God. The 
deepest peace is scarcely conscious of its own 
peacef ulness. ** Son, thou art ever with me, and 
all that I have is thine.'' . . . The peace of him 
that has lived near to God is like the quiet, 
steady luster of the lighthouse lamp, startling 
no one, ever to be found when wanted, cast- 
ing the same mild ray through the long niglit 
across the maddest billows that curl their crests 
around the rock on which it stands. 

30. 

HOPE. 

Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth him- 
self, even as he is pure. — I John iii, 3. 

LOVE and hope will keep us strong against 
passion, as they kept our Saviour strong in 
suffering, *Svho for the joy that was set before 
him, endured the cross, despising the shame." 



DAILY THOUGHTS. 



DEC. 

The Hour of Dealh i 

The Death of the Christian 2 

The Death of the Sinner 3 

The Grave „ . 4 

Affinity 5 

Hell ., 6 

Heaven 7 

Comfort in Bereavement , 8 

Jesus is Coming Again g 

Preparation for Christ's Return 10 

First Argument for a Resurrection 11 

Second Argument for a Resurrection 12 

Third Argument for a Resurrection 13 

Fourth Argument for a Resurrection 14 

Fifth Argument for a Resurrection 15 

Sixth Argument for a Resurrection. ... 16 

First Principle of the Resurrection. 17 

Second Principle of the Resurrection 18 

Third Principle of the Resurrection , 19 

The Heart's Yearning after Immortality 20 

Christ's Kingdom 21 

The Reign of the Saints , 22 

Spiritual Rewards 23 

Doing Good for the Eternal Reward 24 

Merit 25 

Degrees of Glory , 26 

Degrees of Glory 27 

The Harvest 28 

Eternity 29 

"The Measure of My Days" 30 

It is Finished 31 



Dec. I.] THE HOUR OF DEATH. 2G9 

1. 

THE HOUR OF DEATH. 

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
crown of life. — Rev. ii, lo. 

I SOMETIMES shudder when I awake, as it 
were, for a moment, to remember that 
while we are dallying the wheels of the chariot 
of the Judge do not tarry too, but are hurry- 
ing on with what will be to some among us 
fearful rapidity. 

Be sure that in a dying hour the questions 
will narrow into a very few : God, eternity, 
the soul, judgment, and the cross. 

2. 

THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN. 

Precious in the si^ht of the Lord is the death of his 
saints. — Psalm cxvi, 15. 

A CHRISTIAN conqueror dies calmly. 
Brave men in battle do not boast that 
they are not afraid. Courage is so natural to 
them that they are not conscious they are do- 
ing anything out of the common way — Chris- 
tian bravery is a deep, calm thing, unconscious 
of itself. There are more triumphant death- 
beds than we count, if we only remember this 
— true fearlessness makes no parade. 



270 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 3. 

It is one thing to meet death intrepidly, and 
it is altogether another to meet it peacefully 
and trustfully. 

He who has lived with Christ will find 
Christ near in death. 

We are conquerors of death when we are 
able to look beyond it. 

3. 

THE DEATH OF THE SINNER. 
Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have 
no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but that the 
wicked turn from his way and live : turn ye, turn ye 
from your evil ways ; for why will ye die, O house of 
Israel? — Ezek. xxxiii, it. 

T CAN conceive no dying hour more awful 
■*■ than that of one who has aspired to kno7v 
instead of to love^ and finds himself at last 
amid a world of barren facts and lifeless 
theories, loving none and adoring nothing. 

4. 

THE GRAVE. 
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he 
which is filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is 
righteous, let him be righteous still : and he that is holy, 
let him be holy still. — Rev. xxii, 11. 

HAVE you ever marked that striking fact, 
the connection of the successive stages 
of the soul ? How sin can change the coun- 



Dec. 5.] AFFINITY. 271 

tenance, undermine the health, produce rest- 
lessness? Think you the grave will end all that 
— that by some magic change the moral being 
shall be buried there, and the soul rise again so 
changed in every feeling that the very identity 
of being would be lost, and it would amount to 
the creation of a new soul ? Say you that God is 
love? O, but look round this world ! The aspect 
of things is stern — very stern. If they be ruled 
by love, it is a love which does not shrink from 
human agony. There is a law of infinite mercy 
here, but there is a law of boundless rigor too. 
Sin, and you will suffer; that law is not reversed. 

5. 

AFFINITY. 
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
men unto me. — John xii, 32. 

ON sympathy the final awards of heaven and 
hell are built; attraction and repulsion, 
the law of the magnet. To each pole, all that 
has affinity with itself; to Christ, all that is 
Christlike; froju Christ, all that is not Christ- 
like, forever and forever. Eternal judgment is 
nothing more than the carrying out of these 
words, *' I know my sheep;" for the adverse of 
them is, "I never knewj^^/^y depart from me, 
all ye that work iniquity.' 



272 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Dec. 6. 

6. 

HELL. 

Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness : 
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. — Matt. 
XXV, 30. 

IT is not the dread of hell that makes men 
miserable. There is an eternal law that 
man cannot be happy except in keeping God's 
commandments. Make a man sure of heaven, 
and leave him with a soul not reduced to har- 
mony, not humble, not pure, not obedient, he 
is a wretch still. . . . What is misery ? It is 
the boundless law of duty written on the 
heart, and the accumulated self-reproach of 
not obeying it. 

An unforgiving, vindictive heart is in hell. 
How can it be saved ? It is ^' delivered to the 
tormenters.'* 

It only needs that the body which buries 
recollections for a time shall be dissolved, 
and then there begins the eternity of a hell of 
recollections, when every act of bygone guilt 
which has not been sunk in the blood of 
Christ shall be as fresh and vivid before a 
sinner's eyes as it was at the moment when it 
was committed. 



Dec. 8.] COMFORT IN BEREAVEMENT. 273 

7. 

HEAVEN. 
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and 
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
neither shall there be any more pain. — Rev. xxi 4. 

A MAN who is filled with one idea, repeating 
it, is looked upon as a dreamer, an enthusi- 
ast. People smile when they hear his project, as 
a kind of monomania. If we ask what was the ex- 
pression most frequent on our Redeemer's lips, 
the answer is, ** The kingdom of God." ... So 
the repetition of *' kingdom of heaven" became 
at last ludicrous in the ears of the Pharisees. 

Heaven must be a state ... of internal hap- 
piness. But there will also be external objects ; 
for we read of floods of melody from everlasting 
harps, of temples of gorgeous magnificence. 

John gave two characteristics of our future 
destiny : resemblance to God — " We shall be 
like him ; " and a clearer vision of him — ** We 
shall see him as he is." 

8. 
COMFORT IN BEREAVEMENT. 
The world passeth away, and the lust thereof : but he 
that doeth the will of God abideth forever. — i John ii, 17. 

AFTER a moment of bitterness almost the 
very first thought that rose on my heart 
was, His work is done, and done well ; and I felt 
V8 



274 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Dec. 9. 

roused and invigorated, instead of depressed, 
by the remembrance that we have a work to do, 
and the night cometh, when no man can work. 
. . . What soothing, ennobling recollections 
yours will be when the first stunning sensation 
is over ! We need such recollections to nerve 
and brace us for our work. Struggling, bat- 
tling, conquering, and those who have passed 
into eternity looking on — the cloud of wit- 
nesses. I, too, have just lost a dear one, and 
we weep together ; but one feeling must be up^ 
permost with us both, that we have deliberately 
chosen the cross for our portion, and it is no 
marvel if some of its blood is sprinkled on us. 

9. 

JESUS IS COMING AGAIN. 
The dead in Christ shall rise first : then we which 
are alive and remain shall be caught up together with 
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so 
shall we ever be with the Lord. — i Thess. iv, 16, 17. 

THE coming of Christ includes the perfect 
state of human societv. Not hereafter, in 
a world beyond, but here — the coming of Christ 
to us^ not our going to him. And the perfect 
attitude is to be looking forward to this. . . . 
Patiently, humbly, watchfully waiting for that 
which shall come. 



Dec. lo.] CHRISrS RETURN. 275 

There are three advents : First, in the flesh, 
which is past ; the second, in the spirit ; the 
third, his judgment advent. 

lO. 

PREPARATION FOR CHRIST'S RETURN. 
Take ye heed, watch and pray : for ye know not 
when the time is. — Mark xiii, 33. 

THE true preparation is not having correct 
ideas of how and when he shall come, 
but being like him. ** Every man that hath 
this hope in him purifieth himself even as he 
is pure." 

The apostle says, ^' So that ye come behind 
in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord," 
as though that were the best gift of all; as if 
that attitude of expectation were the highest 
that can be attained here by the Christian. 
It implies a patient, humble spirit, one that is 
waiting for, one that is looking forward to 
something nobler and better. 

When Christ comes we must be found not 
stripping off the ornaments from our persons, 
but the censoriousness from our tongues and 
selfishness from our hearts. 



276 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. ii. 

11. 

FIRST ARGUMENT FOR A RESURRECTION. 

If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to 
God by the death of his Son ; much more, being recon- 
ciled, we shall be saved by his life. — Rom. v, lO. 

WE do not believe that there shall be a life 
to come merely because there is some- 
thing within us which craves for it, but because 
we have believed in the life and death and res- 
urrection of the Man of Nazareth, . . . for those 
truths which you hold deepest you have gained 
not by the illumination of your own intellect, 
but you have reached them first by trusting in 
some great or good one, and then, through him, 
by obtaining credible evidence of those truths. 

12. 

SECOND ARGUMENT FOR A RESURRECTION. 

If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ 
not risen. — i Cor. xv, 13. 

THE second line of argument used by the 
apostle ... is known among logicians by the 
name of the reductio ad absurdum^ when a man 
can show, not so much that his own opinions 
are true, as that all others which contradict 
them are false and end in a monstrous absurd- 
ity. . . . The apostle contemplates Jesus Christ 



Dec. 13.] RESURRECTION. 277 

for a moment simply as a mortal man; and he 
says it is an absurdity to believe that that man 
perished. . . . The Sadducees denied the possi- 
bility of a resurrection ; the Pharisees denied 
the possibility of his resurrection. Now, if 
Christ be not risen, argued the apostle, you are 
driven to the monstrous supposition that the 
Pharisees and Sadducees were right, and the 
Son of man was wrong; . . . you are driven to 
the supposition that when he said, " Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit,** God's 
reply to that prayer was "Annihilation," that 
He who had made his life one perpetual act of 
consecration to his Father's service received 
the same fate as the blaspheming malefactor. 

13. 

THIRD ARGUMENT FOR A RESURRECTION. 

If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet 
in your sins. — I Cor. xv, 17. 

WHAT he here implies is that the Christian 
faith, in such a case, must have failed in 
redeeming man from sin. For he assumes that, 
except in the belief of the resurrection, the quit- 
ting of sin and the rising in mastery over the 
flesh and its desires is utterly impossible to 
man. ... It is more life, and fuller, that we want. 



278 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 14. 

1 4. 
FOURTH ARGUMENT FOR A RESURRECTION. 
If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, 
and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found 
false witnesses of God; because we have testified of 
God that he raised up Christ : whom he raised not up, 
if so be that the dead rise not. — i Cor. xv, 14, 15. 

THERE was no mistake. It was either true 
or it was a falsehood. The resurrection of 
Christ was or it was not a matter of fact ; James, 
Cephas, the twelve, the five hundred, either had 
or had not seen the Lord Jesus; Thomas either 
had or had not put his finger into the print of the 
nails ; either the resurrection was a fact, or else 
it followed with the certainty of demonstration 
that the apostles were intentionally false wit- 
nesses before God. 

15. 
FIFTH ARGUMENT FOR A RESURRECTION. 
If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet 
in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in 
Christ are perished. — i Cor. xv, 17, 18. 

THE aposile does not say that it is im- 
possible that man should perish. It is a 
favorite argument with many to point to the 
lofty attainments and irrepressible aspirations 
of the human soul as a proof of immortality. . . . 
This is not St. Paul's argument. He does not 



Dec. i6.] RESURRECTION, 279 

speak of the excellence of human nature; it is 
not from this that he draws his inference and 
proof of immortality. But it is from this, that if 
there be no resurrection of the dead, then they 
'' who have fallen asleep in Christ have per- 
ished;" in other words, the best, the purest, 
the noblest of the human race have lived only 
to die forever. . . . You are required to believe, 
moreover, that, as they attained to this good- 
ness, purity, and excellence by believing what 
was false, namely, the resurrection, so it is only 
by believing what is true that they could arrive 
at the opposite, that is the selfish and base char- 
acter. So that we are driven to this strange par- 
adox, that by believing that which is false we 
become pure and noble, and by believing that 
which is true we become base and selfish. Be- 
lieve this, who can ? These are the difficulties 
of infidelity. 

16. 

SIXTH ARGUMENT FOR A RESURRECTION. 
Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the 
first fruits of them that slept. — i Cor. xv, 20. 

THE first fruits of the harvest were dedicated 
to God, whereby he put in his claim for the 
whole, just as shutting up a road once a year 
puts in a claim of proprietorship to the right of 



280 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, [Dec. 17. 

way forever. It was thus Paul understood the 
ceremony. ** For if the first fruits be holy, the 
lump is also holy." Thus when the apostle 
says that " Christ is the first fruits of them that 
slept," he implies that part of the harvest has 
been claimed for God, and therefore that the 
rest is his too. The resurrection of Christ is a 
pledge of the resurrection of all who share in 

his humanity. 

17. 

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE RESURRECTION. 

Some man will say, How are the dead raised up ? and 
with what body do they come ? Thou fool, that which thou 
sowest is not quickened, except it die : and that which thou 
sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare 
grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain : but 
God hath given it a body as it hath pleased him, and to 
every seed his own body. — i Cor. xv, 35-38. 

PAUL discerns in the world three principles: 
First, that life even in its lowest form has 
the power of assimilating to itself atoms ; he 
takes the corn of wheat which, after being ap- 
parently destroyed, rises again, appropriating, 
as it grows, all that has affinity with itself, oUch 
as air and moisture ; that body with which it is 
raised may be called its own body, and yet it 
is a new body. . . . This does not prove the 
resurrection, but it shows xl's, probability. 



Dec. 19.] RESURRECTION. 281 

18. 

SECOND PRINCIPLE OF THE RESURRECTION. 

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial 
but the glory of the celestial is one, and the gloiy of the 
terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and 
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars ; 
for one star differeth from another star in glory. — I Cor. 
XV, 40, 41. 

THE second analogy that Paul sees in 
nature is the marvelous superabundance 
of the creative power of God. . . . Are we to 
believe that God has exhausted his creative 
power, that he has done all that he could have 
done, and that he could make no new forms "^ 
Are we to believe that the wisdom and knowl- 
edge which have never been fathomed by the 
wisest are expended, and that the power of 
God should be insufficient to find for the 
glorified spirit a form fit for it 1 

19. 

THIRD PRINCIPLE OF THE RESURRECTION. 
That was not first which is spiritual, but that which 
is natural ; and afterward that which is spiritual. — i Cor. 
XV, 46. 

T^HE third principle which Paul refers to is 

^ the principle of progress. . . . The law of 

God*s universe is progress ; and just as it v/as 



282 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 20. 

in creation — first the lower and then the higher 
— so it is throughout, progressive happiness, 
progressive knowledge, progressive virtue. . . . 
At first we lead a mere animal life — the life of 
instinct ; then, as we grow older, passion suc- 
ceeds ; and after the era of passion our spirit- 
uality comes, if it comes at all — after and not 
before. Paul draws a probability from this, 
that what our childhood was to our manhood 
— something imperfect followed by that which 
is more perfect — so will it be hereafter ; our 
present humanity, with all its majesty, is noth- 
ing more than human infancy. 



o 



O. 

THE HEART'S YEARNING AFTER IMMOR- 
TALITY. 
When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, 
and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall 
be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is 
swallowed up in victory. — i Cor. xv, 54. 

NO man, in a high mood, ever felt that this 
life was really all. . . . We find a yearning 
in our hearts after immortality, and that not in 
our lowest, but in our highest moods, and when 
we look around we find the external world cor- 
roborating our aspirations. Then how shall we 
account for this marvelous coincidence.-^ Shall 



Dec. 21.] CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 283 



we believe that those two things point to noth- 
ing .'* Shall we believe, and shall we say, that 
God our Father has cheated us with a lie "^ 
Therefore, Paul concludes his masterly and 
striking argument: ^'When this corruptible 
shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal 
shall have put on immortality, then shall be 
brought to pass the saying that is written, 
Death is swallowed up in victory.** 

21. 

CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as 
it is in heaven. — Matt, vi, lO. 

THIS earth shall be one day a kingdom of 
God. We cannot tell how it may be con- 
summated, . .. . but this unquestionably is 
true, human society j-/^^// be thoroughly Chris- 
tianized. '' The kingdoms of this world shall 
become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his 
Christ.*' Legislation shall be Christian legis- 
lation. And more, a time is coming when 
statute laws shall cease, and self-government 
and self-control shall supersede all outward 
or arbitrary law. 

Peter announced the approach of another 
day of grace and glory, far more blessed and 



284 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 22. 

glorious than any that earth has yet seen. 
The anticipations of the first were realized in 
that which is called the first coming of the 
Redeemer • the anticipations of the second 
dispensation shall yet be realized in what we 
call the glories of his second advent. We are 
led, from 1 Peter i, 10-13, to assume an anal- 
ogy between the two dispensations : the first 
did not come without expectation ; and ac- 
cording to analogy, we are entitled to expect 
that neither shall the second come on us with- 
out anticipations of its approach. 



THE REIGN OF THE SAINTS. 

Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world ? 
— I Cor. vi, 2. 

IT does not mean that the saints shall be as- 
sessors with Christ at the day of judgment, 
but that they shall rule the world. . . In that 
kingdom to come goodness shall be the only 
condition of supremacy. This, then, is the 
first principle of the kingdom. . . . The sec- 
ond principle is that the best shall rule. The 
apostles " shall sit on twelve thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel "... Take that in 
the spirit of the passage, and it means, and 



Dec. 23.] SPIRITUAL REWARDS, 285 

typically expresses, that in that kingdom the 
best shall rule. The third principle is that 
there each shall have his place according to 
his capacity. In i Cor. xii, 28, this is plainly 
laid down. . . . Men are ministers now who 
are fit only to plow ; men are hidden now in 
professions where there is no scope for their 
powers; men who might be fit to hold the rod 
of empire are now weaving cloth. But it shall 
all be altered there. I do not promise to say 
hmv this is to be brought about ; I only say 
the Bible declares it shall be so. 

23. 

SPIRITUAL REWARDS. 

He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; 
and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bounti- 
fully. — 2 Cor. ix, 6. 

THE rewards are these : do right, and God's 
recompense to you will be the power of do- 
ing more right. Give, and God's reward to you 
will be the spirit of giving more ; a blessed 
spirit, for it is the spirit of God himself. Love, 
and God will pay you with the capacity of more 
love, for love is God within you. 

Reward is life becoming more life. It is the 
soul developing itself. It is the Holy Spirit 



286 THOUGH rs ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 24. 

of God in man making itself more consciously 
with an ever-increasing heaven. You reap what 
you sow— not something else, but that. An act 
of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of 
humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing 
reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hun- 
dredfold. You have sown a seed of life, you 
reap life everlasting. 

24. 

DOING GOOD FOR THE ETERNAL REWARD. 
Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping 
for nothing again ; and your reward shall be great, and 
ye shall be the children of the Highest : for he is kind 
unto the unthankful and to the evil. — Luke vi, 35. 

TO do good for reward, the Son of man de- 
clares to be the sinner's religion, and he 
distinctly proclaims that alone to be spiritually 
good which 'Moes good, hoping for nothing in 
return.'* Men give their money, for example, 
to God ; and because they have apparently sown 
carnal things to God, they expect to reap the 
same. . . . The fallacy lies in this : the thing 
sown was not money, but spirit. It only seemed 
money, it was in reality the feeling with which 
it was given which was sown. For example, 
the poor widow gave two mites, but God took 
account of sacrifice. The sinful woman gave 



Dec. 26.] DEGREES OF GLORY, 287 

an alabaster box of ointment, valued at three 
hundred pence. God valued it as so much 
love. Both these sowed not what they gave, 
but spiritual seed — one love, the other sacri- 
fice. . . . God will repay them with spiritual 

coin in kind, 

25. 

MERIT. 

And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these 
little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a 
disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose 
his reward. — Matt, x, 42. 

MERIT in this there is none. O, the man 
who knows the torment of an evil heart, 
and the man who is striving to use his powers 
wisely, is not the man to talk of merit in the 
sight of God ! There is no truth more dear to 
our hearts than this : Not by merit, but by 
grace, does heaven become ours. 

26. 

DEGREES OF GLORY. 

To sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not 
mine to give ; but it shall be given to them for whom it 
is prepared. — Mark x, 40. 

THE Redeemer's merits are the passport for 
the saint, just as entirely as they are the 
passport for the penitent, Each has the same 



288 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 26. 

heaven — so far they are equal ; but unless 
each can enjoy that heaven with the same 
intensity, so far they are not equal. ..." To 
sit on my right hand and on my left hand is 
not mine to give.*' Did Christ mean to say 
that he had no authority of his own to give 
away the glories of heaven .-^ Surely not. 
"All judgment is committed to him." The 
plain meaning was this, . . . there were cer- 
tain eternal principles in the bosom of the 
Deity which must guide him in their distribu- 
tion. John the beloved asked this favor of 
his Lord, but Christ's personal love to John 
could not place him one step above another. 
. . . Who are they for whom the Father has 
prepared the special glories of the life to 
come 1 They who have borne the sharpest 
cross are prepared to wear the brightest crown. 
They who best and most steadily can drain 
the cup which God shall put into their hands 
to drink are the spirits destined to sit on his 
right hand and on his left. Our Master's 
question was significant. They asked for 
honor. He demanded if they were willing to 
pay the price of honor : Can ye drink of my 
cup ? 



Dec. 27.] DEGREES OF GLORY. 289 

27. 

DEGREES OF Gl!^ORY. 
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of 
the moon, and another glory of the stars ; for one star 
differeth from another star in glory. — i Cor. xv, 41. 

IF in heaven there were anything like univer- 
sal equality it would stand out an exception 
in God's universe; it would not be like one of 
God's plans. Everything we know, everything 
man ever heard of in God's creation, goes by 
steps, gradually and smoothing off from the 
lowest to the highest. The vegetable world 
slides into the animal world, and you cannot 
tell where one ends and the other begins. Step 
by step, from lower organization on to higher, 
till you come to the division line where instinct 
borders upon reason, and you cannot for cer- 
tain draw the boundary. Every spot in which 
you can trace God at work there has he made 
degrees. . . . Again and again revolutions have 
tried to level all differences between man and 
man ; but in the next generation God's insulted 
law has vindicated itself. ... In earth, in matter, 
and in mind there will be, and there must be, 
thrones and dominions, with principalities and 
powers. Now this does not prove that there will 
be degrees in heaven, but it makes it exceed- 
ingly improbable that there will not. 
19 



290 



THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 28. 



28. 

THE HARVEST. 
He said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is 
no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or 
wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who 
shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and 
in the world to come life everlasting. — Luke xviii, 29, 30. 

THE harvest is life eternal. But eternal life 
does not simply mean a life that lasts for- 
ever. That is the destiny of the soul — all souls, 
bad as well as good. But the bad do not enter 
into this "eternal life.*' It is not simply the 
duration, but the quality of the life which con- 
stitutes its character of eternal. A spirit may 
live forever, yet not enter into this. And a man 
may live but five minutes the life of divine be- 
nevolence, or desire for perfectness; in those 
five minutes he has entered into the life which 

is eternal. 

29. 

ETERNITY. 
This is life eternal, that they might know thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. — 
John xvii, 3 

TIME is but the succession of ideas, long 
or short as they are few or many; and 
eternity, as we use the word, means nothing 
more than the endlessness of this successign, 



Dec. 30.] " THE MEASURE OF MY DAYS:' 291 

The distinction made by religious people be- 
tween eternity and time is an unthinking one. 
Eternity seems to me a word expressive of 
a negation. . . . To my mind and heart the 
most satisfactory things that have been ever 
said on the future state are contained in the 
" In Memoriam " [of Tennyson], 

30. 

*'THE MEASURE OF MY DAYS.'* 

I MUST work the works of him that sent me, while it 
is day : the night cometh, when no man can work. — 
John ix, 4. 

T^IME is the solemn inheritance to which 
* every man is born heir, who has a life- 
rent of this world — a little section cut out of 
eternity and given us to do our work in ; an 
eternity before, an eternity behind ; and the 
small stream between, floating swiftly from 
one into the vast bosom of the other. The 
man who has felt with all his soul the signifi- 
cance of time will not be long in learning any 
lesson that this world has to teach him. Have 
you ever felt it, my Christian brother ? Have 
you ever realized how your own little stream- 
let is gliding away, and bearing you along with 
it toward that awful other world of which all 



292 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. [Dec. 31. 

things here are but the thin shadows. . . . 
Every day in this world has its work ; and 
every day as it rises out of eternity keeps put- 
ting to each of us the question afresh, What 
will you do before to-day has sunk into eter- 
nity and nothingness again .^ 

31. 

IT IS FINISHED. 

I HAVE glorified thee on the earth ; I have finished 
the work which thou gavest me to do. — ^John xvii, 4. 

THE way in which our Redeemer contem- 
plated this life was altogether a peculiar 
one. He looked upon it not as a place of rest or 
pleasure, but simply, solely as a place of duty. 
He was here to do his Father's will, not his 
own; and therefore, now that life was closed, 
he looked upon it chiefly as a duty that was 
fulfilled. . . . Let us each apply this to our- 
selves. That hour is coming to us all ; indeed it 
is perhaps now come. " It is finished." We 
are ever taking leave of something that will 
not come back again. We let go, with a pang, 
portion after portion of our existence. How- 
ever dreary we may have felt life to be here, 
yet when that hour comes — the winding up of 
all things, the kst grand rush of darkness on 



Dec. 31.] IT IS FINISHED. 29B 

our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden 
wrench from all we have ever known or loved, 
the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and 
light — brother men, I ask you this day, and 
I ask myself, humbly and fearfully, What 
will then be finished ? When it is finished, 
what will it be ? Will it be the butterfly exist- 
ence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a 
life of uninterrupted sin and selfish gratifica- 
tion, or will it be, *' Father, I have finished 
the work which thou gavest me to do ? '* 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE 



A Hardened Heart 152 

A Man's Last Chance 165 

A Minister's Success 99 

A Personal Devil 127 

A Religious Life 253 

Absolution Gives Hope 177 

Absurd Prayers , . . . . 73 

Affection 237 

Affinity 271 

Agony of Sin 150 

All Nature Helps the Good 42 

Alone 192 

Amusements 124 

An Oath 226 

Anxiety 165 

Apology 167 

Art 118 

As God Sees Us 247 

Atheism , 113 

Backsliding 135 

Baptism 75 

Beauty Should Elevate 120 

Belief 215 

Bible Promises » 91 

Bible Threatenings . 92 

Boasting 147 

Body, Soul, and Spirit 60 

Born of the Spirit 171 



296 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, 

PAGE 

Brotherhood 198 

Can We Absolve? 175 

Can We Fall From Grace ? 135 

Character 59 

Characteristics of Children 44 

Charity .... 241 

Chastity .* 231 

Children of Light 183 

Christ, Our Mediator 19 

Christ, the Son of God , 20 

Christ, the Son of Man 19 

Christ was Tempted 26 

Christ Within Us 33 

Christ's Atonement 27 

Christ's Daily Life 21 

Christ's Kingdom 283 

Christ's Knowledge 21 

Christ's Love 27 

Christ's Miracles 24 

Christ's Resurrected Body 30 

Christ's Sinlessness 25 

Christ's Teaching 22 

Christ's Will 25 

Christian Freedom 226 

Christianity 72 

Circumstances are Sent by God 42 

Comfort in Bereavement 273 

Complaining 210 

Confession , 166 

Conscience 64 

Contented to Doubt . . . 138 

Conviction 64 



TOPICAL INDEX, 297 

PAGE 

Courage 185 

Creation 12 

Curses 150 

Dare to be True 186 

Deeds 220 

Degrees of Glory 287 

Degrees of Glory , 289 

Delivered from Evil 172 

Despondency 210 

Dissatisfaction 249 

Doing Good for the Eternal Reward 286 

Doubting the Word of Children 45 

Doubts of Christians 209 

Duty 216 

Early Religion of Children 45 

Earnestness 164 

Ecstasy 182 

Encouragement 211 

Eternity 290 

Everyone Has a Mission 43 

Excommunication 157 

Exposure 157 

Extravagance 116 

Failure 208 

Faith 228 

Faith that is Dead , 230 

Fashionable Society 116 

Fearlessly Do Right 214 

Feeling 184 

Fifth Argument for a Resurrection 278 

First Argument for a Resurrection 276 

First Principle of the Resurrection . . 280 



298 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. 

PAGE 

Fluency and Eloquence 187 

Forgetting Self 247 

Fourth Argument for a Resurrection 278 

Free From the Law 225 

Friendship 191 

Germs of Evil 247 

Gifts 227 

Giving 206 

God, in His Works 15 

God is a Spirit 8 

God is Everywhere 16 

God is Holy 11 

God is Just II 

God is Love 11 

God is Unchangeable. . 10 

God's Greatness g 

God's Humanity 12 

God's Revelation 89 

God's Pleasures 124 

Good Books 120 

Grace 228 

Growth by Doing 55 

Growth Requires Time 55 

Guidance 39 

Happiness and Blessedness 122 

Hatred 148 

Heaven 273 

Hell 272 

Hiding Our Face from Jesus 198 

History of Creation 13 

Holiness. . , 257 

Home 49 



TOPICAL INDEX, 299 

PAGE 

Hope 266 

How Absolution Gives Hope 178 

How to Become Like Christ 221 

How to Cultivate Memory 62 

How to Overcome Evil Thoughts 262 

How to Pray 74 

How to Retain Friendship 192 

Hypocrisy 148 

Idleness 136 

Idolatry , , , 109 

Imitation and Copy 187 

Infant Baptism 77 

Infidelity , . 139 

Influence of the World 190 

Influence Resides in the Will 190 

Insincerity 148 

It is Finished 292 

Jesus is Coming Again 274 

Joseph, Moses, David, Isaiah 92 

Joy 264 

Judas, Pilate 96 

Judging 145 

Judgment Day 162 

Justification 173 

Knowledge of God 54 

Knowledge Shall Vanisli. 52 

Language 105 

Law 225 

Leaven 131 

Liberty and Independence 108 

Like Christ , . 221 

Love of God 240 



300 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, 

PAGE 

Love of Parents 240 

Love of the World 239 

Mary, John, James, Peter 95 

Maxims and Principles 115 

Meditation 264 

Meekness 243 

Merit 287 

Missions 70 

Mistakes 208 

Mob Force 107 

Modesty , 242 

Morality 114 

Obedience 214 

Old Age 48 

One Fault Leads unto Another 132 

One Law for All 1 70 

Origin of Evil 129 

Our Body 59 

Our Great Want 249 

Our Judgment 144 

Our Lips 139 

Our Race 105 

Our Will 65 

Overcoming 213 

Parents 49 

Passion Never Reasons 143 

Paul 97 

Peace, How Obtained 265 

Peace of God 266 

Penance 1 63 

Penitence 163 

Perfection the Christian's Aim 256 



TOPICAL INDEX. 301 

PAGE 

Pharaoh, Balaam, Eli, Saul 93 

Philanthropy 205 

Politeness 204 

Possibilities. . . 39 

Praise 145 

Preaching Christ loi 

Predestination 130 

Preparation for Christ's Return 275 

Pride 146 

Progress 218 

Prophecy 234 

Punishment 158 

Read Few Books 121 

Redemption. 174 

Reign of the Saints 284 

Religion 66 

Religious Excitement. . 185 

Religious Feeling 184 

Remorse 159 

Repentance 162 

Repining at Circumstances 40 

Resolves 7 

Reverence 237 

Reverie 263 

Riches 115 

Righteousness 243 

Sacrifices 216 

Sanctification the Aim of Life „ 254 

Sarcasm 143 

Saving Faith 229 

Sculpture 119 

Second Argument for a Resurrection 276 



302 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, 

PAGE 

Second Principle of the ResurrecUon 2S1 

Seeking God 171 

Self-respect Lost 160 

Sensitiveness 238 

Serving God at a Loss , . 41 

Servitude 207 

Sin 126 

Sins of Thought 137 

Sixth Argument for a Resurrection 279 

Socialism 106 

Society ... 105 

Solitude 193 

Sorrow.. 195 

Sowing and Reaping 125 

Spiritual Rewards 285 

Spiritual Strength 214 

Spiritual Wisdom ... 236 

Stewards 206 

Struggling Up to God 250 

Suffering 194 

Suicide 161 

Superstition 109 

Sympathy 197 

Taste 117 

Teach Us How to Pray 75 

Teachers 50 

Teachers 51 

Teaching Godliness to Children 46 

Tempted of the Devil ' 12S 

That Which Remains of the Afflictions of Christ. 217 

The Ambition of the Christian 189 

The Ambition of the World, . ,....,.,,.,..,.-. j85 



TOPICAL INDEX, 303 

PAGE 

The Backward Look 103 

The Beggar 199 

The Bible 88 

The Blood of Christ 29 

The Capacity of Enjoyment 123 

The Christian Gentleman 203 

The Church 70 

The Confessional 87 

The Cost of Pleasure 123 

The Cross of Christ 28 

The Death of the Christian 269 

The Death of the Sinner 270 

The Deepest Curse of Sin 152 

The Disappointments of Life 36 

The Emptiness of Life 36 

The Evil of Party Spirit 107 

The Evil of Slander 140 

The Fall of Man 130 

The Fate of a Sermon 100 

The First Thing to Do 170 

The First Time You Sinned 131 

The Forward Look 104 

The Function of Sorrow 196 

The Gentleman of the World .... 203 

The Grave 270 

The Harvest 290 

The Heart's Yearning after Immortality 282 

The Heathen 68 

The Holy of Holies 257 

The Holy Spirit 33 

The Hour of Death ... 269 

The Lord's Supper. ......................... 78 



304 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN, 



PAGE 

The Mass , 87 

The Meaning of Life 38 

" The Measure of My Days" 291 

The Memory of the Wicked 63 

The Middle Class 200 

The Mind 6i 

The Minister's Fitness for Work 98 

The Night 18 

The Object of Absolution 176 

The Object of Love 239 

The Opinion of Others 1 14 

The Physician 98 

The Poor 199 

The Puritan Sabbath 82 

The Remedy for Slander 141 

The Rest of God 252 

The Rest of the World 252 

The Robes of the Invisible 17 

The Sabbath Abolished to Christians 79 

The Sabbath a Law Now 80 

The Sabbath Necessary Now 81 

The Sabbath of Eternity 83 

The Sanctifying Power of Sorrow 196 

The Sea 17 

The Secret of the Lord 260 

The Sermon on the Mount 23 

The Simplicity of the Gospel 90 

The Sin of Sins 139 

The Sinner's Reception iSr 

The Soul Degraded 151 

The Strength of Sin 153 

The Trinity , 34 



TOPICAL INDEX. 305 

PAGE 

The Two Sacraments . . .... 78 

The Unitarian View . , 71 

The Unpardonable Sin 141 

The Valley of the Shadow of Death 211 

The Worship of the Virgin 67 

Third Argument for a Resurrection 277 

Third Principle of the Resurrection 281 

Thorn in the Flesh 248 

Thoughts of God 260 

Thoughts of Heaven ' 261 

Time 102 

To Read With Profit 121 

To Witness to the Truth 235 

Tongues 232 

Tongues May Be Understood 233 

*' Too Late to Begin " 160 

Transgression 127 

Trials 248 

Trust 230 

Truthfulness and Veracity 236 

Try Again 212 

Unbelief. 13S 

Unconscious Influence 191 

Unrest 250 

Unutterable Things 259 

Unworidliness 244 

Vain Preaching loi 

Vanity 146 

Virtue 231 

Visions 258 

What is Absolution ? , 174 

What is Forgiveness ? 168 

20 



306 THOUGHTS ON GOD AND MAN. 

PAGE 

What is Perfection ? 255 

What is Prayer ? 73 

What is Sanctification? 254 

What is Truth ? 234 

*' What Shall I Do to be Saved? " 169 

Why Forgive Others ? 168 

Wickedness 149 

Wise Men from the East. 69 

Work 219 

Work Out Your Own Salvation i 219 

Worldliness 113 

W orship 66 

Worthless Knowledge. 53 

Would You Be Rich ? , . 200 

Your Life Work. 38 

Your Pledge to God 212 

Youth 47 

Zeal 186 



ex 

n^7 



